Ep. 181 The Science of Unforgettable With Steve Spangler

Hey there, Mark Brown. This is when you have not only a legend but somebody who you look up to. Somebody who's helped you actually literally become unforgettable. Like I am out of my freaking mind. Steve Spangler. If you don't know him, he's the science of engagement expert. I remember this Ellen show. I was watching this Ellen show and that's before I even knew him. He's. Look at the numbers. Un freaking believable. But what I love is billion views. He's so smart and he's got heart and he's just one of those guys. You is a role model. 30 years, over 1 billion view. 1 billion views. He's been on Ellen 27 times. Guinness Book of world records, social media numbers over 3 million followers. I don't know how we got him on. I think we.

I think God loves us, Darren.

God loves us. Amen, brother. That's the only way he can explain it. Not of this earth. Best selling author, hall of fame, keynote speaker. Just unbelievable the people in STEM that he influences. Look at these logos, man. I'd be happy to have two of them. He just goes on and on. If you've never seen the moment the Mentos experiment where the Pepsi blows up like that's the first viral video he made. Viral video, viral video. He was viral before they even use that word. Award winning television. It just goes on and on. Ellen. Ellen DeGeneres, science guy since 2007. His own TV show, DIY side Science. Three time Emmy nomination, turning into Max Headroom here. That's what, that's a problem of being dyslexic. But as long as you can make fun of yourself, you're good. And special events, look, just. He is the guy. If you want to chat with him. Steve spangler.com Check with Carly. This is the guy. Mark Brown. This is the guy who made Unforgettable. Unforgettable.

You guys are. I just. We better have you guys do the intro for everything from here on out. Fair enough. Because you made that all up. I don't even know where those graphics came from. Higgins, we need to get a copy of whatever that was because that looked good. That really did.

I threw them together. I threw them together. All right, so here's the. Here's the cheesy intro.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcast with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown. Mark Brown.

Your life tells a story. And there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix.

And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time.

Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation, Ahas? Let's dive right in.

I like that, Higgins. We gotta do that more. Bam. That's how we get started, kids.

Nice.

How's that? Wow.

Steve, thanks for being here with us. You are a legend. Just, wow. Great. Amazing on stage, amazing man offstage. Thanks for being here.

You're very nice. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Can you see this is already going differently? If you had Dr. Nito Cobain here, it would be very different. But we're already blowing up and playing at the same time. And Steve just dropped that. Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry.

No worries. I just. I was a little slow on the. On the beat.

Good enough. Won't have to use it again. You guys are so nice to reach out and to. To ask what an amazing book you guys put out. So. Absolutely loved it. And it's exactly what people are doing. They're delivering unforgettable presentations, but they have to think about that ahead of time. And I love the way you guys think about that because most people don't think about how. How would I make this unforgettable? Which means I gotta probably put in a little bit more time than I normally would. I have to build some connections I wouldn't normally not stock that is unforgettable, Right? Or maybe I should say this way. Nothing that's unforgettable is just canned stock material. I can't just show up and give the same presentation that I gave a thousand other times. But for some reason, this one's unforgettable. So it takes work. And when you're willing to put the work in, audiences remember, and that's pretty cool.

Amen.

Wow, I miss Steve. Thank you for sharing that. Clearly you are someone who puts the work in and people have heard about you, they've seen you, they've loved you.

And.

And I'm curious, where in the world did this all begin? Were you like 8 years old lighting a match under a mouse you found on the house? Where did this all begin, Steve?

Well, let's. You know what? I have a feeling that some of your viewers are right now going, hold on just a second. Mark and Darren are in a professional office. Steve Spangler is in his kitchen. But we're going to go behind the scenes. Look at this. It's not really our kitchen. So this is our studio house that we have outside of Denver, Colorado. This is kind of where I took up residence. About right here. Higgins, is it about right here? Higgins off camera right now, he's. He's switching and everything. When Covet happened. So this is pretty much where I stood for about 18 months, trying to connect with people who we weren't allowed out to connect. And so it kind of became the place people think this is. This is like a. A fake background. There's nothing fake about it. The only problem is this is if you take a look here and you go, hey, Steve, get. Get something like there's beaker flasks and chemicals and the craziest things in here. Yeah, it's not. It's not like the real house. Because my wife. There's no way they would allow this. So that's where I thought that I would come to you today. And here's part of the secret mark. And to start to answer the question for you, this looks approachable. When I'm on and when I was on, for example, shows like the Ellen show or, you know, other stuff, people are like, well, you just. You got a huge budget and there's a big stage, and I don't do that. And for me to connect with my core group, which happened to be educators from all over the world, I needed to be able to show them I'm doing the same thing. I can't be in my classroom because we're all out of the classroom. So I'll show you at least what I can do for my kitchen. And that brand kind of took off, and that was pandemic brand. But it goes back to something that a guy by the name of Mr. Wizard taught me years ago, the original Mr. Wizard. People who are watching, there's young people that don't even know the words that just came out of my mouth. Mr. Wizard. Mr. Wizard was the original guy, the man. And when I got my very first show with NBC Back in, in 1991, I reached out to him and asked him for help. And he said two things. He says, don't let him put you in a lab coat. He goes, that's a character. People don't connect with characters. They connect with human beings. Which I thought was really nice. And the second thing he said was, you notice I don't use beakers, I use mason jars, and I don't wear a lab coat. I wear a sweater. And he says, and notice also that I'm in my garage, not a professional lab. He says, once you make it approachable, people will connect. He was far beyond his time, really, when he was thinking. But, you know, almost 30 years later, I'm sitting there a little bit more, sitting here looking and going, this is exactly what I talk to audiences all over the world about, what happens when you engage and connect through a shared experience. We call that little phenomenon Best day ever. And so Mark, getting a roundabout way of saying it all started with some key moments early on. Growing up and doing magic tricks, loving science as a kid, it all kind of fit together because somebody was nice enough to tell me early on that it was okay to follow your passion. Everything else will fall into place, but you got to be happy first, and then everything else will follow. And that's kind of a brave thing. You got to step out and just kind of hope that there's something there. Right?

Wow.

Well, you know, it's funny, you mentioned that as a kid, you had a lot of science. You mentioned your classroom now becoming your classroom. And people would think an expert in science and doing wonderful things. And by the way, your kitchen has these lovely flowers of various colors, a veritable cornucopia of color. Or. And I'm wondering, those roses to your left look like they're really good artwork. The purple, the blue, the yellow.

They don't come that way in the store.

Yeah. No, no, no, no. You're so nice. So right now, it is the. We're middle of January. Just. I mean, people might watch this a year from now or half, whatever it is. So we're in January. That means that I've got thousands of teachers around the world who are thinking about Valentine's Day, mostly us, but you get some great people who are overseas. They're thinking about Valentine's Day, and they're thinking about it from the standpoint of going, oh, do I have to deal with Valentine's Day? Because for a teacher, they're like candy and cupcakes. And what do we have to do? And every. And so what we do is we'll. Especially now, since we can do this from a video standpoint. I used to do all these live workshops, but now from here, I can show teachers how to create these kind of cool experiences to teach a little science and have some fun at the same time, all themed around Valentine's Day. And then you give us 30 more days, and it's St. Patrick's Day, and then a little bit more time, and you got April Fools, right? Or whatever. So we use those opportunities to build connections. So, for example, if I can show a teacher how you can take flowers like this, these Just white little carnations that are here or white roses or whatever it is, and then turn them into these. Tell me that that's not cool. Look at that flower. Is that the coolest thing? It's fascinating, right? And how did you do it? How do you do it? I'll. I'll share it with your viewers. Now, some people might go, oh, you dip them in food coloring. And while there are some little activities out there that you dip, water and food coloring never produces results. And so here's what I learned that you have to do. And you extract the metaphor from here, right? So if I take. Oh, here, here's a good one right here. So these were white earlier today. Go. That was white earlier today. And here's what you have to do. You take the white carnation, and then first of all, you got to give it a fresh cut. And sometimes in life, don't you need a fresh cut? Don't you need something that just says, hey, I gotta start all over again fresh? And then if you were to just take this into. Dip this into a glass of water that had some food coloring, couldn't be very good. Mediocre at best. So you have to do this. The secret is you dry it out for a couple hours. So you take it out of the water and you let it sit out for a couple hours. What does that do? It gives it thirst, right? It now wants water. It needs it. Gosh, as a human being, don't we need that every once in a while? Don't you need to have somebody say, and you hate that. You go, steve, we no longer need your services, and you might need to find another job. That's called thirst. And then you gotta have a concentration, concentrated amount of coloring. So look at this, for example. You see the coloring that's sitting in here now? I'm going to now make these blue as well. But there's red food coloring down here. So look at that. That's super concentrated food coloring. No water, just the. I mean, that's how you get it from the store. Like, you empty all the bottles there. And that is what's going to produce these amazing results up here. I think of it like, I got to be in a mastermind group. I've got to be surrounded by people who are so much better than I am, who will challenge me, right? I gotta have a thirst, and all of a sudden the results will be stunning. And I' have variety because all of these flowers are pretty cool and not bad. But, man, tell me that this isn't Better right here. It's phenomenal. Why? Because there's a little bit of diversity, isn't there? A little bit of just everything going on in here, and that's what makes these stunning. That's a showstopper. Because I've never seen anything like that before. Pretty easy to be able to do. It's just all in the process of doing it. So thank you. I didn't want to put all the flowers away and I thought, well, if you happen to ask about it, I'll tie in my little metaphor that I've been thinking about, because I know that you don't have science teachers, teachers that are listening to the podcast necessarily, but I think that there's some universal lessons there that we could all take away. Yeah.

And I'm curious how you turn the carnations into roses.

That's a magic trick. And that's 4.95. See, now sometimes the budget will allow a rose. Isn't that kind of nice? White roses seem to work nicely, and so it's kind of a cool way to be able to do it. Nice.

That's pretty.

You know what? Now I gotta. Can I just show you one more thing? And then I promise the rest of the time is yours. Here, I gotta. I gotta show you something because I think, if I remember correctly, Darren, you and I talked about this before with a mutual friend, Mike Rayburn. And so. But I wanted to show your viewers something kind of fun again. I'm in this Valentine's mindset, so forgive me. Here's what I found, is that if a teacher sits down with kids and says, kids, today, today we're learning about thermochromatic changes and we're looking at learning about the chemical composite. As soon as they start saying that stuff, you're like, oh, my eyes roll back into my head. Phenomen phenomenon based learning. That's what teachers are doing today. I think we're all doing. It basically just means grab my attention, be unforgettable with something that I see. Now all of a sudden, I'm going to give you permission to connect and I'm going to lean in, I'm going to engage. Got it. Take a look at this. All your, your viewers can do this. So you start with a piece of paper. So grab a piece of paper and you're going to take a pen and you're going to write a little note on the pen like this, like, oh, I don't know, how about I. Oh, I.O.U. oh, right here. I kind of messed that up. So here, let Me erase. Okay, I owe you. Higgins, this is an IOU for you. You're doing a great job. IOU how about a thousand bucks? All right, I owe you a thousand bucks. And how's that? Bingo. So there it is. There's my IOU can you see it there? I'm sorry. It's a little white. Oh, there it is right there. I owe you a thousand bucks. Got it. Higgins, this is for you. Happy about that? You can see with the applause or any. There's nothing there. There's nothing. We have. Now, check this out. Watch if I take a lighter like this. So here's my lighter. Watch what happens if I heat this ink up. All right? So if I heat the ink up, watch what happens. The ink will vanish. Look at that. It is a thermochromatic ink, which means it will change by temperature. Now, why would Pilot want to do that? This is a Pilot pen. So look at this. It's called. I'll show you, and I'll hold it right there for you. It's called a friction pen. Can you see it right there? A friction pen by Pilot. And here's what they know. They know that if you take. And you take an eraser and you rub it back and forth on the paper like that, friction creates heat, and heat will cause this ink to change. We've all seen those. The things that kids play with, like it's a blue cup, and they wrap their hands around it, turns pink or whatever it might be. So that's how they made the ink, which is pretty cool. They just never realize that if you take a paper, like a contract, and you sign a whole bunch of things on your. Take notes, and then you'll put it in the car, and you go to your next appointment and you hop out and you have a quick little lunch, you come back and it's gone. It's. It's. It's truly is gone. So from a teacher standpoint, it was, like, the coolest thing in the world. And they sell these highlighters as well. I need to deal with friction, I think, because. Wow. Wow. So there's. Wow. Got it. So there it is. And I'm using the highlighter, so if you're trying to do it so you can see it a little bit better. But now watch. I could take a curling iron. I could take. I think we talked about a blow dryer one time. But look at Vanish. Isn't that just. That's magic, man. That's magic. Now, here's the secret. If you accidentally have this happen to you. All you have to do is now put it in the freezer. So if you put this in the freezer and let it get nice and cold, we'll go back and check on it, it'll come back again. That's phenomenon based learning. And a kid to learn about something like that and to lean in, they're like totally accessible. You mean I could go to the store and buy a frixion pen? Absolutely. There's no trick. There's no. No nothing at all. And you might even have some viewers that would do this because wouldn't that be kind of fun to have a. A special note that you write that looks like it's gibberish, but when you hand it to somebody on Valentine's Day, they're looking at this note or this card going, I don't get what you mean. And then you hold it over the candle or yeah, you hold it over some source of he. All the. The things that are gibberish disappear and it just says I love you on it or something like that. So it's kind of fun. You just use a combination of two different inks to make it happen. Unforgettable. This Valentine's Day would be unforgettable. They will never forget that Valentine's note if you deliver it that way. And some pretty cool flowers. Podcast done, people. Everybody. Everybody is good. But Darren, you did something with this. Didn't you guys do something with that? And what'd you do?

Absolutely. We had our very first convention called Unto Unforgettable, with permission from you, because my church used this idea via Mike. And then I remember calling you for permission to be able to actually use this. So what we did at this idea is at our convention, lady and the Champs, we literally had these canvases around, regular canvas around the convention area, and we had people write down their lies. So on day one, what were the lies you were told when you were young? Those things where people told you, you can't. You'll never. I'm amount to anything. We had even. I don't know if you must know, Steve Watson, the football player.

Yeah.

He was told he'll never make it. And he literally wrote it because he was at that convention. Wrote down. So we had people write the lies down. On day one and day two, we brought the canvases up on stage. Mark at that moment was having a little laryngitis, but I had Mark host it as I took now. Now picture this though, and realize where the emotion comes from. People literally went deep on themselves and wrote down what they were told that they still remember on these canvases. And then Sunday morning, day two, we started off, and this is what it looked like.

Wow.

It's time to erase the lies and accept a new at that you were honest enough to write your lies on these sheets. And you may have come believing lies, but today, because we are here together, because the answers are in the room, because we are part of the Stage Time University lady and the Champs family, you want to erase the lies and leave you with one poignant, simple truth, that you are unforgettable.

Powerful. Wow. We talked about it, but I've never seen that video. That's super powerful, that Mark.

This is the greatest moment of this podcast in two years. To watch Steve Spangler see one of the ideas he gave to us, and we used it and implemented it. And Steve, I have to tell you, Mike Davis, who was our emcee for this event, literally was about to walk on and take over and introduce the first speaker of the day. And he couldn't. He was so choked up because the lie that he was told when he was young was erased. He couldn't walk on the stage. So we thank you and this is the coolest moment.

Super powerful, man. And just to see it like that. With your permission, I'd love to be able to share that idea now with teachers all over, because we've worked with teachers on a program called the Science of Leadership. We would use science demonstrations, these kinds of things, to be able to communicate a leadership concept. Right. As you're trying to teach kids versus opening the book to page 147 and learning about communication skills. What you just did took a simple little party trick and blew it up into something huge that on stage, to be able to see that and see how powerful with a student, to be able to go the lies or the misconceptions or the myths or that whatever you want to call them and to have them just vanish. Did anybody ask, like, what the magic gun was that you were using or anything? Did it make it seem like you were spray painting? Or did they actually. They had to be just as mesmerized as I am.

They were. And Regina, who is my office manager, she was there. We had the special pens with each of the canvases. And I kept saying, you got to use these pens. You got to. Because I was so afraid someone would pull out their own and screw it up. So. And people were. Some people were literally in tears because it was so deep, it was so powerful. We have you to thank for that.

Come back to A closeup. Let's do that one more time. Come back to a close up. Honestly, if you look for them right now, they really are called frixion pens. I've now worked with Pilot because we put out a video immediately when years ago, just showing people, hey, did you know this happens? Do you have any ideas, whatever it might be? And then we got a call from Friction people going, wait just a second. What else do you know about these? Then we figured out how to make the message come back. Here, let me see if the message came back. And so they're, they're kind of digging it. Oh yeah, it's starting to come back. You can see, see how the message. Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. So. So that's kind of fun. I've done it quickly. So if you want to do it quickly, if you take a chunk of dry ice, you got to have a Glo. But you can immediately make it come back. So those truths, those mistruth or those misconceptions, the lies, you could make them come back on the canvas. You didn't want to for that purpose, but if you wanted something that disappeared and then all of a sudden you wanted it to come back, you could make the message appear by just holding dry ice, something cold, and going over the canvas and that message would reappear. So kind of cool. But that's the concept, that whole idea of the science of leadership building, almost like an object less lesson sometimes. Obviously object lessons has a kind of a church, a spiritual kind of connotation. So. But you know what I mean here you're just, you're trying to use it as you're creating this, this idea or this concept that really is unforgettable. And if you see it sometimes and people can do it, that's what makes it viral, is that they're totally approachable. Next time they're at a Staples or an Office Max or something and they're going through the pens. People who are watching this podcast, I'll promise you, they're looking for friction pens there. It's even just a party trick right here, watch. And it just kind of disappears. It's kind of a cool thing to be able to see, but that's what makes something viral. That's why Mentos and Diet Coke became viral. Because we had been telling kids for so many years as teachers, don't try anything at home, don't do this at home, don't do this. Kids are so tired of it. It was the perfect storm of YouTube was only three months old when we put that first video out three months old. So that was great. And we're using Diet Coke and Mentos that are quirky little candy that you can find at the store. Everything accessible. They could connect. They could engage through a shared experience. Totally worked.

By the way, Steve, two things. One, if my head goes down, I'm not nodding off. Okay. I'm taking notes because at the end of the program, I'm going to share some of the gems you shared with us. And number two, I appreciate a question about. Did anybody ask how you did that? Here's the power of what that did for us and our speaker family, Steve. They were so moved by the impact of what happened. No one thought it was important to ask how. All they knew was, my lies are gone. I can now live in my truth, and if I can be unforgettable, I'll take every step I can to be there. And the beauty was they were less concerned about the how, what made them was the why. And in that particular case, it was so powerful. And again, publicly, we thank you for a simple party trick that was, for us, transformational. So thank you.

Wow. Well, thank you for taking it to that next level. But here you. You touched on two things, and hopefully I'll remember, the first thing you touched on was, is when they're not asking the how. If you look at. If you are interviewing a magician right now. Professional magician. Magician. I don't consider myself professional magician, but I grew up in a family of magicians, and I have been doing magic for 55 years. That is the ultimate. That's the pinnacle that a magician knows that he or she with a routine has achieved that level. When the audience doesn't ask how, if they're focused on the how, it means that it wasn't transformational. You didn't transport them to a new level where they could care less about, is there a wire, or whatever. They're just so moved by what happened that they. They love experience that much. So truly, you took people to that level, which is absolutely amazing to be able to do. And I think that when we take our audiences to that level, when they're not asking the how, but what happened or why did that happen? It takes them to that next level as well. So just absolutely huge. And you know that we talk about it all the time. You know, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. And you actually did. You did it. You. You overdid that to a point. That was just. It really was phenomenal. So can't thank you enough.

We appreciate that you Know and we know you teach teachers, you educate educators. But there may be those who watch, listen to us, who do want to ask a how, why? Question. How does a scientist and a science teacher become a world renowned speaker as well? How did you bridge that gap? Why did you bridge that gap? And weren't you happy just not just, but helping so many people as a teacher. What leads to you being a csp? Cbae, this great speaker of the world is us longing to hear from. What do you decide to make that adjustment in your career?

So couple things. First of all, I mentioned the magic a little bit. I grew up in a family of professional magicians. My dad was an information technologist. Long before Google existed. They were talking about databases where you could search information and possibly pull information. So it was in those early 70s, 80s, just the beginning of the 90s, right. So he had a career, as he says, a real job. Then there are these weird people that would show up for magic class. My dad ran a magic school in Colorado and I remember him leaving corporate work. A very pivotal time in my life because I remember sitting at the kitchen table, dad had come home for lunch, didn't work, I guess far away. I remember having a conversation. He and mom were having a conversation and he said the words, kitty. My, my wife's name's Kitty. Kitty. I'm not happy anymore. And she said, well, what would make you happy? And he said, said not doing this job anymore. And she goes, why don't you quit? He goes, well, how would we support. And she goes, we'll figure it out. But she goes, why don't you quit? And we'll. It's just like that whole flower thing where you cut and you start fresh. I watched my dad, he quit. He came home, I guess took him two days because we never went home. We never went out to dinner, you know, during the week or anything like that. We went out to dinner during the week and he sat there and told his kids we were young. He goes, well, I quit my job and we're going to start and magic school. And, and I just, I watched my mom and dad kick into that entrepreneurial thing that was deep inside of them. My dad invented all the fake blood that Hollywood used, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures used in the late 60s, 70s and 80s when JAWS came out, that was our blood. And, and my mom, dad was a chemical engineer as well. So dad invented this amazing blood. Mom would blend it up. I, I'd bring kids home and show them the blenders and like my mom makes blood. Social workers Will show up at the house back in the day, wondering what that was like. Do you really make blood? And so, so I grew up. There's this young magician. He was 24 at the time. I'm trying to remember his name. Oh yeah. David Copperfield. And before his first special, before ABC had said yes to his very first special. And dad was a consultant for, for David. David. And David went on to do, as, you know, just world class kinds of things. But I was surrounded by magicians and so I learned to perform. I loved to perform. I worked my way through college performing, met my wife kind of that way. So, so it was always in me. And when, when I got an opportunity in high school to meet a chemistry teacher who was kind of doing science and magic to pull us in, it was just the way that he presented those demonstrations. I globbed onto that real quickly. He knew I should be a teacher, so he planted those seeds. So it's just, it was a kind of a cool thing. I was able to take my performing presentation skills that I had honed thanks to mom and dad and hundreds of magicians and thousands of hours of performing and transfer that to teaching, but to never lose the authenticity of teaching. I was never just using magic as a, as a little party trick. I was trying to use it to connect a message or to engage the kids more. I was just doing it the way a magician would do it. I didn't realize there was some educational basis behind that. So I don't know. That's, that's a very long winded answer to your short question. But that's kind of how the whole thing happened along the way and the speaking thanks to people like you and nsa National Speakers association and just great groups of people who taught me to be a better speaker along the way. So I'm still learning because I'm sure.

There are other individuals who are great educators who may not go the National Speakers association route.

Correct.

Was there an appeal for you to go to go to speaking route in addition to what you're doing with education?

Yeah. If you're asking, do I speak to groups that are not educators? Is that, I mean, the idea?

I'm sure there are those who do what you do very, very well, but they don't go to NSA and join and become a pro speaker.

But you did. Yeah, there's the. Okay, so part of that is that debate. Are you born an entrepreneur? Do you learn entrepreneurship, whatever it is? I watched my mom and dad create something from nothing. I watched my dad sit with press type let's see how old your audience is and clip art and do brochures and advertise. And people came to the house and we had videotape before there was really videotape that the real world knew about. It was reel to reel. I learned how to thread a reel to reel machine. Magicians would come to have themselves videotaped to see if you could see the coin hiding in your hand or the cut on the deck or whatever it might be, you know, the, the false cut, whatever. And so I always knew that there was something else. And I. And it's kind of that teaching thing. I just knew that the classroom was fantastic. I learned those skills, but I knew that I could also perform. And so the speaking. I knew that there was another avenue. I don't know that teachers necessarily want to become professional speakers. Speakers. I've been given this wonderful opportunity to dip my toe into both of those and they've given me the permission to be able to do that. So, yeah, I don't know. I think there's part of a leap of faith there. I knew it could make a living doing both of those. And ultimately, if you ask, I mean, I haven't been in the classroom since 2003. I'll still work with, I work with teachers now. Almost all my work is in professional development with educators and kind of split that with corporate work, where I'm talking about the science of engagement. Because corporations want to know. Know this kind of thing, but they just want to know, so how'd you do that? How do you get a billion views? How did you know that YouTube was going to be it? Do you think Tick Tock is it? Do you think Instagram is it? So how, in this world of noise that's out there, how do you get to be seen and heard? And so corporations want to know that. And so I'm honored to get to dabble a little bit in that area as well. And look at you as toastmasters. You know, I think the piece from a speaking standpoint, I had an 8th grade English teacher who told me I, I should sign up for the Optimist Oratorical contest. And that's just been a way of our life. I mean, I went all the way through the state level with that for Optimus. My brother and sister have state titles. Then went to high school and did the whole speech team kind of thing with state national titles. And my brother and sister did the same thing. So it was just that kind of thing where I knew that there was this thing of speaking it was just, how do you turn it into a business? And the person who really did that for me was Mark Schoenbrock. Because I was just at the very beginning of my. My teaching career, 1990, when I saw him. He came to Denver, and I was actually running sound for him. Because teachers make so much money, we sometimes get a second job. And I was running AV. I ran Mark Sherenbrock's AV for him in 1990 at Arapahoe High School here in Middleton, Colorado. And I watched the greatest speaker I'd ever seen in my life mesmerized 2,500 high school students in a gym. And it was just that kind of thing where you don't even know what to say. You don't even know what to go up and say to him. Like, we had a mutual friend, and so there was a connection that was there. I spoke to Mark last night, in fact, Mark and Sue last night. So we are not only close friends. My son Mark is named after Mark Sharon Brock. Wow. So that's how I think of that man. And my gold standard. So he's the one that showed me that speaking could be something that you could do professional, professionally. So that's how it works.

Well, real quick, you just taught me of important lesson. Well, you reinforced an important lesson. One, you're willing to learn, and NSA was a vehicle to help you to learn how to build a business. And two, you were open to the wisdom of a mentor.

But you asked.

And so often we say, oh, man, I can't go to Steve Spangler. That's the science that's ln. I can't help the answer him. Darren Lacroix. Oh, this guy is the only guy in the world with three speaker designations. I can't go to him.

Right.

And you're open and you're receptive. There's so much you can learn. And that's a lesson you just taught tacitly. Darren, I'll let you take over, my friend.

No, you're so good, Mark. Thank you, Mark. That's nice of you to say.

I'm gonna have to go look up tacitly. Hold on.

The running joke here, Steve, is this. The running joke is one. Once in a while I'll wax eloquent. Darren goes to his left and pulls out his lexicon. Why don't you just say Mark? And he will never let me forget that. So there it is.

And I'm just lexing so I don't even know how to look them up. I don't even get close enough for a suggestion in a Word document when I type it. But tapping into your thought process, Steve, and for people who are professional speakers, emerging speakers who truly want to be unforgettable, they're. They're never gonna do what you do, how you do it, but your thoughts. What advice would you give to someone to create something that was uniquely theirs to make their presentation? How do you think that through?

I think we all go through that phase. Both you, both Darren and Mark, you've been to NSA enough, you've been through speaking enough to know that we, when we, early on in a career, early on, when we're starting this, we see somebody who speaks and you're like, oh, my gosh, I need to do that. I got to take up mountain climbing right now. All right, I got to climb. And then the next speaker, it's like, gosh darn it, I wish I was only born with, you know, that kind of thing. We're always wishing for something that we don't have. And, and some of us even even try to do other people's presentations that we're not supposed to, or lift material that, no, we're not supposed to. Everybody, me included, we've all done it, we've all learned from it until it finally. When you are so passionate about what you're doing and you're constantly searching and you're constantly searching, what do they say? Chance favors the prepared mind. Right? You're constantly looking for that thing that's authentically you. And many times you find it when you're not even expecting to find it. But all of a sudden it hit you like a ton of bricks. You have to. Once you find it, it's almost like you have to be willing to go, all right, let's sign on the bottom line. That's it. And you have to be willing to go. That's it. I think I just found it. And for me, I remember I was teaching. I had just come home from doing a Halloween presentation. Long story, I do it in my keynote, but a long presentation. I did a Halloween show for kids. And so I would go around. I told the teachers at school where I was teaching, Teaching. I said, I've got a 15 minute science magic Halloween show. If you want me to come to your class, just let me know, you know. And that library, when I made the announcement at the staff meeting, turned into the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. 9:45, 10:15, I'll take 10:20. So here I'm pushing this around the room, I'm blowing up the pumpkin. The kids are walking on broken glass. It's the smoke thing. It's the gummy bears on fire. It's shocking the kids. Kids with this thing or whatever. I remember coming home and my wife looked at me and she goes, what happened to you? I go, honey, you won't believe this, but it's really a pretty fun day. And I gave her a whole rundown of what happened. And sometimes she'll pause before she speaks. That means that she's smart and she's processing. And she looked at me and she said, isn't it fun that today you figured out what you're supposed to do for the rest of your life?

Wow.

Isn't it fun today that you don't have to worry anymore about why you would get up in the morning? You found it. Now, the thing that you need to do is not deny it. Because I told her time and time again, I'm not going to be a teacher. How can I support a family? We want to have kids. And, well, there's millions and millions of teachers who do very, very well. And. And I had a mindset that was wrong. And I needed somebody that I trusted to be able to go, this is it. You found it. And so I think that part of your answer is that, is that you got to trust those mentors around you. You, that when they look at you and go, stop doing the thing with the Indiana Jones or don't do that thing anyway, don't do that. Don't do that. Get rid of this. You're like, this is great material. It doesn't. It sucks. That material sucks. And somebody else already did it. So you got to listen to somebody who's smarter than you are. And then when they go, that's it. Do that. And you're like, no, there's nothing there. Oh, they can see. But we have to rely on other people who can see things that we don't see. So that's why if you're. You're not in a professional group, if you're not surrounded by people, if you're not concentrated. Look at that. Pulled back the metaphor. If you're not in an environment where you're concentrated with people who are better than you are and smarter than you are, how in the world could you ever know when to take the advice? You got to put yourself in that vulnerable situation where you're not the best in the room and you're willing to learn. I think that's super valuable for me. Every time I go to NSA and I see. See a Darren Lacroix or Mark Brown, somebody who's on stage who absolutely kills. I mean, when there's a genuine standing ovation, not just a we're NSA and we stand up and we clap. Genuine standing ovation. It's when Sharon Brock speaks or you guys, or Jeannie Robertson, or just think of the masters and that audience is to their feet because you moved them. That's pretty amazing. You now know that you're in the presence of people who are better than you are, and you're in the right place. Place. You can only grow from there. Humbling. And you'll grow.

Darren, I need to ask one quick question because you. You're gonna see, kind of led me to this. You have done so well for so long that you seem flawless to a morning speaker. You know, they see you do great. Oh, man, I want to be like him. And then something happens and they have a hiccup, a bump in the road, a flub, a flip, and they're like, I can't do this anymore.

Anymore.

Have you ever had that? Been in that place where you thought, oh, I bombed. What advice would you give to someone who comes to you and says, I, I'm done. I made a mistake. I messed up. What do you say?

Have you been there? More times than you can ever imagine. And I think that if we're speaking to speakers now, let me look just directly in and I'm talking to you right now. If you're a speaker, you can't go home to your significant other, your spouse or whatever, after you've stepped off stuff stage and you did a great presentation, right? You. You know, and we say it all the time, you killed or whatever it was, but just you connected. It was one of those crazy ones. And you go home and you go, honey, sit down. I did it. I can. It was the best ever. Because here's what my wife does. She goes, it's time for you to take out the trash. So take out the trash now. And if you could get that, and I'm leaving, and you can take care of the kids, because it's not that they. They don't love you. And they. They don't care. They don't. They don't. They're not in that mindset. I can pick up the phone and call Darren. I could call Patricia Fripp. I could call Mark Schoenbrock. It used to be Earl Room. I can call those people and go, I had a good one today. And they're like, all right, tell me all about it. Because we all know what that feels like. And those are, those are fleeting moments sometimes, because more often than not I can pick up the phone and call those people and go, you got to talk me off the ledge, man. Because I did 45 minutes. And I knew after the first three minutes it was horrible. And it was all I could get through the next 42 minutes because it was so bad. I bombed huge. Help me. And we need to be around those people who can help us get through those tough points is we only learn from those bombs. I mean, on stage, when you bomb and it hurts so bad, you just know I'm going to do everything possible that I never get to that point again. So what do I need to do to never hit that again? I'll do the same thing with teachers. You know, I'll say to teachers, statistically in education, the dropout point for a teacher is at years three and seven. Ask the actuaries, they know from their little tables. So we'll have superintendents who will book me to come in to just speak to the third year teachers, for example, and the goal is get them to sign their freaking contract. You know, just get to say yes. Because if we can get them to four, then that's seven. You get them to seven, they're a lifer. Can you imagine that if you were seven years as a teacher, the likelihood of you doing this for your entire career is well in excess of 90%, or at least it used to be. So you can see how valuable that is. And so, you know, there will be times when I'll say to a teacher, you've got to have a confidant, somebody that you can turn to that you can just say, today was a horrible day. I don't think I can make it through it. And for both of you, as a dad now, I never used to be sappy. Now I am. But my son, who is a first year teacher, he is teaching for the very first time in the Denver Public Schools. He's coming home, he lives at home because he's a smart kid, he's saving his money. But I see him sitting there at the dinner table, sometimes almost in tears, sometimes in tears, going, I don't think I can do this, Dad. I just, I can't connect with these kids. And the next day he comes home and he's on cloud nine, like, it worked. Man, I don't know what it was. And you try to debrief it with him, but you need to have somebody there that guides you through those, those ebbs and flows. We all need it. Whether, you know, we're talking about stage time or just in our lives. And for some of us that could be somebody who's in our church. For some of those it could be just a, a great friend, a confidant, could be a spouse, could just be a family member. But we have to be able to connect with people who get us at that point in time. That's why the speaker thing, people don't get teaching as well. And so that's why you have to be able to talk to a teacher who goes, I don't connect because the non teacher is like, I, I don't know, just pick another lesson. I don't get it. That's not what we're talking about. And the same thing with speaking. So hopefully that kind of makes sense because I can't think of. I can, I can personally picture right now in my mind hotel rooms with me sitting on the edge of the bed, calling somebody before cell phones, calling one of those confidants to be able to go, I'm supposed to do a breakout tomorrow. And the keynote was horrible. What do I do? And to have somebody who will at least talk you through those hard times to get you through that next 24 hours. Hours. Wow. Pretty tough.

Yeah, that's critical. Critical. So if you're not a member of NSA National Speakers association, you might go and check that out. And we would love you to check out Stagetime University because that's what we built is our own little community. Because of those moments. I, I remember, I don't know Steve, if you knew Rick Siegel at all. No, he was a chapter president back in New England in the 90s when I was, was just getting started. And I remember I bombed. I failed. It was like my first big corporate presentation for like 500 bucks. And I just said I bombed, I failed. They hated me. And he said so I'm like, how do you argue with. So like I. But he, you know, he talked me off the ledge and I was literally going to walk out the room and never ever do it again. So I think we need to surround ourselves. So as we start winding down, down. What do you, what would you define a moment in a speech or like to try and help us search for this, the unforgettable moment. What do you, what do you think defines that or creates that?

Sometimes we don't know what it is and you wait for the audience to tell you what it is and it just happens. Early on in my speaking career, my wife Renee would go and I'd be Speaking to a group of teachers. And you know, many times I'm doing like a half day, full day workshop and you'd start at 9am and she knew there'd be a break at 10:30. In the teaching profession at the time, most of those people were females. My wife, she'll kill me for telling you this. Go to the bathroom, would go into a stall and occupy the stall waiting for people to come in because she would get all the intel that she needed by just being in the bathroom, bathroom. And nobody had any idea that it was Renee. And she'd come back to me and she'd go, listen, cut this. Because they, they think that sucks, but they really liked this or what. And she would tell me what they liked and what they didn't like and it was interesting. And she always would sit in the back of the room. Mark Schoenbrach says that sue does the same thing for him. Not in the bathroom, but she'll sit in the back of the room, constantly takes notes. She could deliver Mark's speech better than Mark delivers the speech, but she's constantly looking. And she looks at heads and she looks at heads and she looks at the point in time when people turn to each other. They're not disengaging from you. They're engaging at a higher level because you just triggered something in them and they got to share it with the person next to them and then they're going to come back to you. I found I do this thing in my education keynote. It's called Best Day ever. And Best Day Ever is a theme because a kid came to me at that point and said, Mr. Spangler, today was the best day ever. And I'm sitting there, there going, today was not the best day ever. We did nothing. But for that child, it connected. And I started looking at that, going, well, how would we create Best day Ever moments for people around us? And I found that there's kind of almost a formula for thinking about it. It's much bigger than I am. And once. And when I put it out there, Best Day Ever didn't connect. But couching it the correct way, it's now a. Carly will tell you, my agent will tell you that, that it's a key moment in that people now will bring me in because they say we, we want Best Day ever. As the conference scene, it's not like we've never heard the words best ever, but we've never heard it with your story. So the story and the way it's wrapped and that piece seems to connect with the audience. And when you see the audience go, oh, it's almost like they lean in, they engage, and then they relax, going, got it. And when people come and feed it back to you, you know, people who come up and tell you, great presentation, Steve, really enjoyed it, they basically have told you nothing, right? So you just go, thank you. I didn't connect with that person. So I see those as failures. It's the person who waits around going, oh, my God, I had a best day ever. And they want to tell you the best day ever. And that line gets longer and longer because each person who it wants to connect with you wants to tell you a best day ever moment. Well, best day ever. That resonates, right? And so to answer your question, I think that it's those moments we have to be willing to listen to what, what the audience connects with and then go with that and go, whoa, what was that? Stand up. Comics do it all the time. I mean, you see the good ones who tell you that they come off stage and they write like a fiend, right? Because it's same material that they've done for the last 10 weeks. But tonight it connected because they paused right before they did this, and then they connected and they got to recreate that moment as speakers. We can do that over and over and over again. It's the difference between an amateur and a pro, right? And those clients hire us because they want that best day ever moment delivered at that time so their audience experiences it as well. And thank goodness we have great people around us that can tell us that's the moment that you connected. Do more of that, less of that.

Brilliant. I'm going to brag on Mark for just a quick second. I don't know if you know this about Mark, but his world championship speech in 1995, seven minutes, he turned it into an Emmy nominated program about bullying for school kids. And he literally 200 times a year was speaking at schools and just amazing. He watching Mark with a high school audience and a grade school, middle school audience, mesmerized. I watched him here. I'm like, I can't do that. You hire me for a high school or something. I'm like, no, no, thank you. Call Mark.

I know, amazing skill, Mark. That, that's the pinnacle. And it's so funny, inside baseball, all the NSA people think that they're. They're wonderful because they spoke at the Ritz Carlton and, you know, they've got thousand dollars where, I mean, the clicker alone is a thousand bucks, million dollars. With the av, Whatever it is. You want to see a real speaker. Look at a Mark Brown who can walk into an. A gym with kids. Not even an auditorium, a gym. And the sound system sucks. And it's a little bit better than. Than a bullhorn. And your introduction is, well, Mark's here. I hope he's better than the last guy we had. And they walk off and they hand it to you. And yeah, those are the introductions. Those that. But when somebody with your skill can do that, that's al. That's rock star speaker. That's hall of fame stuff right there. And when you can do that, that's, you know, you've reached the top. So you're at the top of the top.

Real quick, Steve, funny you mentioned that because. Because my first interaction with Mark Sherenbrock was back in the mid-90s when I had to replace him at an event in Nipewin, Saskatchewan, Canada. He couldn't afford to get there from Minnesota, where he was coming from. So I did my talk. I did his talk. I doubled up for the same fee. But I got to know Mark sue that time, and you're right. Mark and sue are salt of the earth. He's been in our podcast, and I'm just privileged to know that I know Mark Schoenbrach. I get to hang out with Steve Spangler. I feel I'm amongst the best of the best, and my biggest challenge is to do my part of it and then to go through our keepers after Darren gets his last question in. So, Darren, over to you, my friend.

You are wonderful.

So as Mark checks his notes, last question is, what would you say to someone over coffee who was a new emerging presenter, had a message they cared about, about intent was there for the audience, audience focused. What advice would you give them?

With her permission, Carly, I'm going to give your advice. Okay. What you do. I think I heard her say, okay. All right. So here's what happened. Sometimes people are so nice to call, and they'll be like, hey, love to be a professional speaker. Totally passionate about this. I am the best at this, this and this. Love to pick Steve's brain about the speaking business. And Carly has a wonderful line, and she says, you know what? Steve would love to take you to dinner, and you get to pick the place. And they're like, wow, this will be great as soon as you get a hundred gigs under your belt. So put a hundred gigs under your belt, and Steve will take you wherever you want because you're going to have so much to Talk about he's going to have to pick a great place that you guys can stay there for a couple hours. And in all the years of her saying that I can count on this hand how many people have done, done it, you know. So the advice to, to people who really want to do this is you got to get out and speak. And it's the same advice you've given on your podcast a million times, I'm sure. But we all have to find venues to speak. I go back and I think about stand up comedians who are really good, the Jerry Seinfeld's of the world, how they do. They're, they're working comedy clubs. They're just, they'll walk in unannounced and look at the manager and go, 10 minutes. And they'll go, yeah. And they're doing material because they're working material. Right. We don't have a thing called comedy clubs for us really as professional speakers. Our equivalent is called Rotary and it's called Optimus and Satoma clubs and any civic organization that, that still meets and they have those breakfast meetings that really are not that good and but they need content every single week. We can do that and we can go week to week to week. We can always find. And you go, well, I'm a professional, professional speaker. Now hang on there, Sparky. Just log the old cockpit time. You know, don't tell me what a great pilot you are. Just land and take that plane off a couple thousand times. I'll bet you we have something great to talk about. So honestly, you got to get out there and do it. There was a lady here in Denver who was in the academy, she was in the nsa, Colorado Speakers Academy, gone through the whole thing. And she confided in the group that she would throw up right before a presentation every single time because she was so nervous, she hated it so much, she finally had to say to herself, I don't want to be a speaker. I wanted to do something else. I thought I wanted to be a speaker, but I had to log that time to realize either I wanted to do it or I didn't want to do it. And this is too hard of a job to not want to love it. You're not always in those beautiful, glamorous situations. You're in the Ram Coda, right? We've all done that before. We've all been in those environments that aren't that great. You know, it's not that glamorous. Glamorous speaking venue. And you got to leave those things feeling like you're on cloud nine because you connected and you did what you were put on this planet to do. You connected and you engaged with people and you had them think differently. That's your job. And you've got to be able to wake up in the morning wherever you are and want to be able to do that. So get those. Get logged. Right. We're having coffee. I'm just gonna go, go out. Speak more and more and more and more and more because we've got some wonderful things to talk about once you've got some of those experiences under your belt. Nice.

Well said. And how would people find you or reach out to Carly if they're interested.

In booking on the back of a milk carton? So if you look on the back of a milk carton, it says missing. That's me. So if you. If you Simply go to stevespangler.com I'll explain to your audience something because you're all professionals. I owned a company called Steve Spangler Science. It was my product company. My wife and I created that company and grew that company for about 25 years. And we sold that company in 2018, which basically means I continue to do what I'm doing. My wife is really the brains behind that. The 45 employees, everybody that was all hers. So Steve Spangler Science is the brand. So if you're Googling Steve Spangler, Steve Spangler Science will pop up all over the place. It's not me anymore. Nice people. And they. They still sell the product and the ideas and those things in the brand. They actually bought that brand. So speakers. Sometimes we talk about what they. The exit strategy is. And I got very, very lucky. I didn't ever expect that would happen. But if you want to connect with me, I'm just Steve Spangler. So if you go to stevespangler.com you'll find me or on Instagram at Steve Spangler. That's always me. And would love to connect with you in any way that we can connect with Carly that way as well. And just stevespangler.com and I'll get you right to Carly and. And would love to have a conversation.

Awesome. Thank you, Steve. Mark Brown, what do we got for K Keepers here?

I got a couple. I got a mouthful. First one. First. First golden nugget. People don't connect with characters. They connect with human beings. So be approachable. Have a thirst for knowledge and learning and have support around you. Be a part of a mastermind. Be willing to soak up the food coloring. Okay. Never use Your skill as a gimmick. Always serve your audience. Be willing to ask for help and ask, what can I learn to be a better entrepreneur, better speaker, better fill in the blank. Don't deny your purpose for being on this earth. Have a confidant to bear your heart. Wrap a conference theme within a story and share that with your audience. Listen to what connects with your audience and create moments for them, them and for yourself. Don't brag that you're a great pilot. Log the cockpit time.

I like that.

Engage your audience. Get your audience to think differently and then you'll be unforgettable.

And Mark, holy fright.

That is the synopsis. What are you going to say, Darren? What are you going to say after he does that?

Anything worth doing is worth worth overdoing.

Yes.

You have to get the audience's attention with a visual to get permission to connect. Love that. And Mark, you said this, but you didn't attribute the wisdom to Renee. Wisdom, which is. It's your job not to deny it.

Love that.

Love that. Love that. Love that. Steve, thank you for being here. Just thank you. You're awesome and amazing in any way we can help you. Please ask. You need somebody to come clean your studio? Just ask. I'll. I'll fly in.

You just did. You know what you did? You just, you gave me. I'm going to go back because you're going to send me this wonderful podcast. I'm going to share it with people in, in my little world as well. But that synopsis that you just did the last two minutes, that was the gold for me because you didn't just take the words that I said, but you spun them. You made it make sense. Sense to you. And you gave me that gift back. That's the greatest gift you could ever give somebody. So I'm going to go take that last two minutes and really absorb that because there's a lot of wisdom in there that came from you guys, from your perspective. So you already did. Thank you for the gift.

Nice.

Perfect.

And now every time I watch Jaws, I'm going to be like, that's the Spangler's blood.

That's it.

I'm hoping that's it. That's not. That's food coloring behind you and not blood. But hey, thanks for being here. Join us next week for another episode from Insights that they'll make us think as well. Steve Spangler, thanks for joining us. Check out stevespangler.com See you next week.

Make sure you subscribe to our show.

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