00:00:00.00 Spencer Not. 00:00:00.91 iandawsonmackay and it oh that That's what I should say. At the very end, if you just give a couple of minutes, so I'll stop the recording like of the call, but I'll upload the two streams, and what I'll do is I'll send you your video copy, and then you can use it for making snippets, lives. 00:00:16.78 iandawsonmackay and You can put it out on, what do you call it, shorts, and anything you want to do with it. 00:00:21.31 Spencer Okay. 00:00:23.34 iandawsonmackay No problem at all with it. and 00:00:26.09 Spencer Is my audio coming through good? I just wanna make sure, um I haven't run the Yeti mic. This is my voiceover mic, so I don't usually use this for like live stream type stuff. 00:00:34.33 iandawsonmackay Yeah. Are you using a Yeti as well? 00:00:36.62 Spencer Yep. 00:00:37.41 iandawsonmackay Perfect. they The best choice. That's what I use. I use a blue Yeti and it's the best mic I've ever had. 00:00:40.56 Spencer Mm-hmm. 00:00:42.91 iandawsonmackay But thank you so much for coming on. It's an absolute joy to have somebody whose videos I just watch as a guilty pleasure because so many people cannot understand the appeal of insects till you start watching your videos. 00:00:55.71 iandawsonmackay But for people who maybe don't recognize your name and they should be ashamed, how would you describe who you are and what you're well known for? 00:01:03.82 Spencer Well, I'm currently well known for making videos on like insects and spiders on the internet. My name is Spencer Hoffman. um I was classically trained as a biologist at the University of North Carolina, um but I was a pre-med student, hated it. And um I've always been, so i'm I'm known for the spider videos, but I've always been a big storyteller. I've loved, I mean, i you name a medium, I've probably messed with it. I've messed with music. I've messed with video game development. I have messed with, 00:01:33.40 Spencer um creative writing, stop motion, the whole nine yards. And I would say that I am a creator who is just really passionate about wildlife. And I want to tell the stories about really weird, really obscure, and sometimes even really scary animals to show people how reality is oftentimes a lot weirder than fiction. 00:01:56.07 Spencer And that's been kind of the the thesis behind the channel and something that I almost have to like revisit and like, you know, kind of recenter myself from time to time just to make sure that I'm doing what I set out to do. That makes sense. 00:02:10.58 iandawsonmackay I love it. I mean, that's how I describe my dating life. It's weirder than fiction. I mean, something I mean's something i love about your show is how deep and passionate and analytical about life you are. you know you You just go into things. You truly love what you do. But people have called you the Steve Irwin of this generation. What was the sort of the inspiration for you for educating and working with animals? Did it come from your pre-med days and seeing the damage that it could do in the body? 00:02:43.13 Spencer No, it it really came from Steve Irwin, actually. um So i I've been into insects, specifically insects. Um, for about as long as I can remember, like, I think one of my earliest memories is catching a big grasshopper in my backyard. Um, I grew up in, uh, in Northern Illinois. It wasn't a whole lot of wildlife up there because it was just super, super developed. Everything is agricultural land or suburbs. 00:03:08.24 Spencer And so a lot of the really like cool stuff like reptiles, amphibians is just gone. So insects were kind of the cool wildlife that I had around. And I mean, one of my earliest memories, I don't even know if I could speak at the time, but I was like super, super young, probably barely able to walk. And I remember finding this big grasshopper in my backyard and just being mind blown by it. 00:03:31.00 Spencer And so my my interest in wildlife actually predates my discovery of Steve Irwin. I'm rewatching the Croc Hunter as a little kid, and it was that was something that kind of fostered and ignited the wildlife interest more than it 00:03:39.26 iandawsonmackay Oh yeah. 00:03:46.11 Spencer Initiated it because it was oh, here's a grown-up who's super passionate and everyone respects who is Teaching people about wildlife and that kind of it kind of framed how I approached wildlife from there on out So like in elementary school I was the guy who'd catch bugs and teach people about him that usually ended up in me getting beat up because people didn't care about that, but um That's what I did And then I want to say, in high school, I discovered river monsters on Animal Planet as well. And around the same time, I started watching like Brave Wilderness on YouTube. And those were two things. I'm like, OK, this is like what wildlife content looks like now, the more mysterious and scary. And I really liked that. As a big science fiction fan, as a big fantasy fan, I really liked how river monsters and Brave Wilderness 00:04:36.67 Spencer spoke to that kind of imagination side of nature, how the creatures we share our planet with are scary and weird. And to me, it wasn't like a fear inducing thing. It was, oh, this is really cool. I want to, I want to add my hat to the ring. So I kind of played with the idea of doing a YouTube channel. Um, but it really started as a creative outlet in college. I was, I mean, when I say that I hated pre-med, we can get into like the mental health side of that. Like it was. 00:05:07.07 Spencer there's there's a very good reason why I'm not in the health field anymore. And it's, it's, I liked the biochemistry of it. I think chemistry is really fascinating, but that was something that I also got into in high school college was or university, I guess, um was not my thing. um I started the YouTube channel as a way to kind of creatively express myself and it Started as like I mean you've probably seen the old old videos that can I catch it series? That was just like can I film? Videos can I do my best to to get the best cinematography I can with the the tools that I have can I film wildlife in my backyard and can I tell stories about them and 00:05:54.38 Spencer It was sort of just kind of me getting my footing with making these kind of videos. I've been doing umve been making videos since... God, how old was I when I first started? Nine, maybe? I've been making videos since I was like nine, um but never wildlife videos. It was always like gaming videos or stupid little skits with my friends or Lego stop motion animation with my brother. Like it was, I was kind of all over the place. um It was college where I'm like, let's let's actually do a proper go at YouTube, but as a creative outlet, and maybe it'll become like a side hustle or something and I can, 00:06:27.23 Spencer um I think my initial my initial pivot away from medicine, because that's another whole can of worms, too. It's a very detailed story, um how I got into to being a wildlife educator. But um my first pivot away from pre-med was to do science education. like I was going to be like a science teacher. And I thought, well, you know maybe I'll use the channel as like a side hustle to help me pay the bills, because you don't get paid anything as a teacher here in the US. 00:06:56.73 Spencer um And I could actually teach, which I prefer doing over medicine. Um, I've always been like a natural teacher, like one of my first YouTube channels that ever got any semblance of traction was a channel where I taught people how to program video games from their home laptop. Um, so I've kind of had this natural, for for lack of a better word, I've had this natural like draw towards whenever I get good at something or I find something really interesting. I have this. 00:07:26.72 Spencer just just this like innert or iner this internal urge to um to share it with people and show people how things work. I don't know why that why that happens, just does. 00:07:35.59 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 00:07:37.53 Spencer And so teaching science was like, okay, well, let's I'm good at science. I like science. I hate my science classes in university, but I know how I would teach these better. 00:07:48.77 Spencer So I'll just teach science instead of doing medicine. um And I'll run a YouTube channel on the side to make some extra income to help supplement a teaching career. um And that's how I'll do things. And then COVID hit the year that I graduated from university. And I'm like, well, let's actually see if I can do this YouTube thing full time because I didn't want to teach science. 00:08:10.06 Spencer through like the education system here online, because it was just horrible. And like the infrastructure was just not there for like distance learning yet. And I really didn't feel like being the guinea pig um of the distance learning industry. So I'm like, the world shut down. I've got nothing to lose. Let's just do YouTube and see what happens. And 2020, I got monetized on YouTube. 00:08:37.31 Spencer Um, it didn't quite pay me enough to pay all my bills. So I was like bartending and stuff on the side, something like some below maintenance to kind of just keep me on my feet. And then it was 2022 that the channel properly launched and. 00:08:52.53 Spencer start making enough money that I could actually go full time on it. And from there, that's basically what I've been able to do. But it's it's there's a lot of like twists and turns in there that if you want to explore more specifically, um there's a lot of like points along the path where I'm like, this is kind of why I ended up here. But the long answer is, I would say Steve Irwin kind of fostered it. But I've always been into bugs since I was very, very young. 00:09:19.80 iandawsonmackay ah No, I love that because it as you were talking, there were so many sort of the prompts or the inspirations that make you such a good YouTuber. I mean, it's almost like you were destined to become a YouTuber because you have this natural likability, you have this amazing way of telling a story, you you have this affinity for and passion for the animals, but you you have a great way of teaching it and bringing us into europe your excitement, into your passion for it. 00:09:50.26 iandawsonmackay your you know your excitement makes us excited. Because I think you said in your one of your lives that you make videos for the six-year-old Spencer, the the kid that you wear. 00:09:59.39 Spencer Mm-hmm. Yep, exactly. 00:10:01.16 iandawsonmackay Do you think that's why your videos are so successful, that you kind of have you awaken our inner child, so to speak? 00:10:09.07 Spencer I would have to say yes. And so it's one of those things where like i could I could be like really humble and be like, oh, I don't know. But um there's a lot of science that goes into that, actually. um So again, i as much as I'm a creator, I love being a scientist. I love being analytical and breaking, like, why does this work? Why does why does YouTube work? Why do some YouTube channels work and some fail? And this is something that I talk ad nauseam with my colleagues on YouTube like other wildlife creators that I collab with on a regular basis like they will hear me to the point where they're like Spencer shut up about target like target audience but target audience is so huge it is so huge and I basically make videos for the six-year-old version of myself but more broadly people who were also the six-year-old version of me at some point in their life and 00:10:59.80 Spencer When I think about that psychological profile, and I get really detailed on like, why does this person like animals? What is what is going out in the wilderness and seeing cool animals do for them? What does it do for me? um It helps me sort of figure out, I mean, every decision, like what kind of music do I use? What kind of shots do I use? What kind of messaging do I use in the videos? It all comes down to what is that person gonna really be like, whoa, that's so cool. um My goal is to basically capture my viewer's imagination the same way that these animals have captured my imagination. So if I'm trying to elicit the same response that happened to me, I have to just kind of get really specific as to, well, why did it work for me? 00:11:45.23 Spencer And if I can figure that out and reverse engineer that, then I can more or less infinitely crank out content that will do the same thing for somebody else. 00:11:56.20 iandawsonmackay because that's what I love about your videos, like with all the comments of people saying, I used to be terrified of bugs and now I love them. Or, you know, you've awakened my passion, this, or my daughter's going out and collecting spiders now and she used to scream and run from it. And I think you've kind of you've opened up this whole world that we kind of just bypass because we don't really notice it. It's on our doorstep and you know there's ecosystems and these kind of symbiotic relationships with our house that these animals thrive in that we probably don't even notice unless you're really you know you know what you're looking for. But to go from pre-med to YouTube 00:12:34.17 iandawsonmackay it's something i'm trying to do just now um i've just left the university role and i want to go and create this podcast and make a business and do all kinds of things but understandably parents can well shit the shit the bed so to speak when it comes to leaving a safe area to going into something like this how did you explain or was there any pushback in that initially when you were leaving and did you kind of 00:12:46.29 Spencer Oh, yeah. 00:12:57.33 iandawsonmackay Have they panicked when they've saw videos of you pushing a spider to bite you? They must have been a bit scared it initially. 00:13:07.77 Spencer My, ah it funny enough, my my my buddies on the channel, the Wildlife Brothers, they they describe how their parents talk to them about what they do in the best way. it's It's the best way to articulate how my parents feel about what I do. Their parents say, we love what you did. 00:13:26.75 Spencer we don't love what you're doing. They love that it's in the past and they're they're fine. They don't like hearing about, oh, we're gonna go catch this snake or we're gonna catch this spider or we're gonna do this or that. Like my ah were we're about to go to Australia. 00:13:38.73 Spencer And I'm bringing my brother with to help me with like filming and stuff. 00:13:41.27 iandawsonmackay uh... is that marks 00:13:43.13 Spencer And but ah no, Carter, he has he's been he's been in, um I think he made a cameo in like a really old video 00:13:46.18 iandawsonmackay ah 00:13:53.93 Spencer back in 2020 or 2021, I think. ah That first ever Copperhead video, he made a very brief cameo in, because I was having him help me um catch the, it was the first venomous snake I'd ever caught. And I had to move it because it was right by the dog run. And like my parents, if they found it, they were going to kill it. So I'm like, well, this snake is in a really bad spot. I need to move it. Carter, can you help me? um He looks kind of like me, but a little bit shorter, a lot more muscle and red hair. 00:14:21.51 Spencer um he's ah He's actually in the most recent Vinegaroon video as well. He he came with me to Arizona as like a test run for Australia last month. um But we're we're I'm bringing him down. We're gonna be in Australia for like three weeks looking for some of the deadliest stuff in the world. And of course my parents are like, you're gonna do what? So there's a lot of pushback and they're always nervous about what I'm doing. um But the actual pivot from pre-med, 00:14:51.10 Spencer um So it was one of those things where pre-med was kind of a self-inflicted wound to myself. um When I was in high school, I was really good at biology. I loved all the bio courses. I took um a lot of like really advanced bio because I was super, super into just how life works. 00:15:13.59 Spencer and because I was doing so well with those kinds of classes. I'm like, well, what kind of career can I have that pays me well enough to live the lifestyle that I want and is in biology? And I'm like, well, medicine. So I just kind of like, well, I'm just going to be pre-med then. And that was just my, that was my thought process. 00:15:31.98 Spencer um And I actually stuck to it until my junior year of university. It was, believe it or not, it was a Spanish class that was the final bullet in that in that career path. Not not organic chemistry, not not any of the really nasty like higher level bios like anatomy and physiology. I didn't like it, but it didn't end my pre-med. Organic chemistry didn't end pre-med. It was a Spanish class. 00:15:59.45 Spencer um My minor in in college was Spanish for the health professions, and I remember my first my first actual like medical terminology in Spanish class, after all the basic Spanish was over, um our first essay we had to describe our future career in 300 words or less. And the spirit of the activity was actually to just use vocab we had learned in that unit of the class. But the way I write essays is I have to kind of put myself in, almost like putting myself in character for writing. um But it's like, I have to put myself into what I'm going to say, and I have to like actually envision it. So like, I was the kind of guy where I would write my 00:16:44.60 Spencer my essay is it could be a 1500 word essay and I could write it in 30 minutes the night before it's due in English or Spanish for my literature classes and I can get an A because that's just how I would just kind of get myself in the zone, crank it out and then do a little bit of fine tuning on structure and then it was done. 00:17:02.97 Spencer This 300 word essay, I was sitting there staring at a blank word file for like six hours. I just couldn't get in the zone to write it. And I realized that it's because I couldn't picture myself in the career at all. So Q with 3 AM identity crisis. um My mom was a lot more understanding of me dropping pre-med than my dad. Cause I think my dad had kind of gotten in his head. He's like, we're going to have a doctor in the family. That's going to be really cool. 00:17:30.62 Spencer And I'm like, I can't do it. It's not going to be good. Um, cause the first three years of college too were just, it was just, I mean a brutal battle with mental health too. It just like, it wasn't that the work was necessarily harder or more work than high school. It was that now that I'm paying for it, it felt really pointless and soulless and I just couldn't I couldn't bring myself to be engaged with the material. And as a result, my grades suffered, my interest in the material suffered, and I just couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't do it pretty much. And so I'm like, well, it's too late to change my major. I have to stick to biology. So my options were drop out or become a teacher. And I'm like, well, I'm three years in, dropping out seems like kind of a waste of time. Like I've already put so much time into school. I might as well get a degree out of it. 00:18:24.06 Spencer And um so I pivoted to education. And I really enjoyed the like learning the psychology of education and learning like how to... One of the things i I still use in my videos to this day is like we what we call it scaffolding. So it's, you know, here's a ah detailed concept you're trying to teach somebody. 00:18:45.39 Spencer here is context they need to be able to understand this. And even when I'm teaching storytelling, it's the same thing with storytelling. 00:18:49.45 iandawsonmackay Thank you. 00:18:51.73 Spencer If you have a certain emotional payoff that you want people to have at the end of the story, you kind of need to have context that makes that emotional payoff happen. So i when I'm talking with my buddies on YouTube, I'm like, we need to have scaffolding for this thing, this thing, this thing in your and your video. 00:19:06.27 Spencer So when I'm you know talking with my buddy Jack from Jacksville Wildlife or the brothers from the Wildlife Brothers, um You know there we'll discuss different video concepts and here's what we want to have accomplished in this video I'm like, okay if this is what the goal is then you need this this and this to make sure that this goal actually Like hits the way it should hit um But but yeah, that was that was the pivot away from pre-med my parents were s Skeptical very s skeptical Especially when I said I was gonna supplement my income with YouTube. They're like what? 00:19:41.51 Spencer Cause they, I mean, it wasn't until, I mean, for the most of my life too, I thought YouTube was just luck. They're like, it's like, what YouTube? Like you can't make money on there. How do you make money on there? Um, it was my freshman year of college actually, that I learned that YouTube could actually be a career opportunity. And, um, I briefly dated this girl, um, my freshman year. 00:20:04.80 Spencer And I still kind of picture this one little conversation we had. it It was kind of the light in the, like freshman year was a very dark time for me, but this one conversation I had with this one girl that I dated briefly, it was kind of the light that kept me going. And so when I met her, I knew she was like really good with cameras. And and as someone who loves technology and loves being like creative, I just was like curious, like how how did you how did you get so good with the camera? 00:20:33.58 Spencer And she was like, oh, you know, I used to have this YouTube channel way back in the day. And I'm like, oh, how many subscribers did you have? And she's like, well, I had about 200,000. I'm like, 200,000? 00:20:42.63 iandawsonmackay is. 00:20:45.30 Spencer um And apparently she had collabed with like some of the some of the OG like big entertainment creators like Gen X Pen and stuff. um But she deleted her channel because of her mental health. like Where pre-med was bad for me, ah YouTube was bad for her. And so she left. But she told me that, yeah, when you you know if you grow a decent sized audience, you can actually make a pretty decent living off of YouTube. And I'm like, tell me more. It was just this weird moment where I was like, 00:21:14.98 Spencer What do you mean you can make money on YouTube? Because it was like this it was like this escape route suddenly opened up because I knew even freshman year that I didn't really want to be a doctor. um But I was I had conditioned myself for so long to be one that I didn't my my identity wasn't ready to let go. um But it was this little escape ramp or escape ramp that was opening up and I'm like, 00:21:39.63 Spencer I need to explore this. like So I spent a lot of freshman year studying YouTube channels like Nick Nimmin and video creators. like If I ever met Nick Nimmin or Tim Schmoyer in real life, I would be able to tell them without any without any exaggeration that they saved my life. like I was in a very bad place freshman year, but it was it was those videos that showed me, yes, you can actually take control of your life. 00:22:04.18 Spencer You can build a career in a business with YouTube. but Those are the things, those are the ideas that kept me going. And my initial thought was build a side hustle that could pay me and supplement my income so I could have a career that I liked better. um I still didn't think of it as a full career yet, but that kind of built over time as well. 00:22:26.52 Spencer And then, you know, the same thing with like, again, with parents, there's a lot of pushback. But what I had to do was basically do a I basically had to make almost like a shark tank level pitch. You can even see I have like diagrams up here. I have a whiteboard in my room that I'm constantly like jotting things down. This is actually like a a rough estimation of like the total addressable market of wildlife videos that I was drawing for myself just for like context when I was doing my own strategy work. um My parents think 00:22:57.82 Spencer very traditionally in terms of careers. they're both ah They both have you know advanced degrees. They they both went to graduate school. They're both in very technical, professional careers. So they they speak numbers. They speak data and figures and analytics. 00:23:15.63 Spencer So instead of pitching them a YouTube career as I'm going to make internet videos and become famous, I was like, here's how I'm going to target an audience. Here's the way I'm going to reach them. Here are the systems that I'm building that will more or less, um, 00:23:33.93 Spencer be conducive to the behaviors that will help grow these videos. Here is how I know that this is the kind of behavior that will grow these videos. Here's what I know about the algorithms that that recommend videos. And here is the you know rough audience size that I'm targeting based on this channel, this channel, this channel, this channel that are doing this many views per month. 00:23:56.26 Spencer um Just tons and tons of data and figures. And then I'm like, here are my current numbers. Here are what people are qualitatively saying about my content. um So people believe in what I'm doing. I just need to make it bigger. And I just need time to actually put in the effort to videos to make them bigger and grow them to the point where it will actually support me. 00:24:17.08 Spencer um Which they, they were like, okay, I at least understand what you're trying to do. And they're like, okay, we'll give you a year. So it was 2020 when I graduated. Like, we'll give you a year to get this sorted. And so for that year, I was, I mean, I was posting weekly, I was grinding as hard as I could. And. 00:24:39.25 Spencer The thing is like, even if you have this amazing plan, the execution part is still a skill that you learn. Like I didn't really know how to fully execute on my plan when I first started hitting it hard. So it was that weekly, that weekly posting was kind of learning. Here's how to make videos. Here is, okay, I'm learning, um, systems to make videos that helped me make them faster. Cause I was at that time, I was also editing for another channel. Um, another channel picked me up. He was like, Hey, I love your editing style. 00:25:09.30 Spencer Would you mind helping me with this? So I was editing for him. So I was basically posting two videos a week for that first. Honestly, for the first two, two and a half years. Yeah. Two, 20, 20, 20, 21. I saw, I stopped editing for him in 22. So yeah, like, like. 00:25:28.69 Spencer just over to two full calendar years, I was editing for him and posting two videos a week um while bartending as well once the world opened up a bit again. 00:25:38.41 iandawsonmackay Jeez. 00:25:39.65 Spencer So um so I was pulling like 70, 80 hour weeks between finding stuff in my yard or surrounding areas to film, filming my videos, editing and writing my videos, editing for my client, 00:25:55.39 Spencer and making sure that I was getting all my bartending shifts in. So the nice thing was I had money coming in so my parents couldn't like say I was wasting my time like okay you're you're making you're paying your bills you're not like homeless or destitute so like clearly something's working. um And then it was it was 2022 when I did the wolf spider bite test um where i mean i can tell you the exact moment my life changed um because i was out it was the last week of june i was 00:26:32.09 Spencer I was filming a light trapping video in my, like, just like out in my front yard. I was like, I set up a like a sheet and I had a light and I was just like seeing what insects showed up and I was filming those. And this big wolf spider shows up under the light trap. And I actually didn't get that catch on camera, but I had a, so I had a catch of a different catch on camera with a wolf spider that I was like shining for. I'm like, well, I, I could use that catch again. Cause it's the same species. Um. 00:26:57.93 Spencer But then I captured that one and I'm like, well, it's a big wolf spider and wolf spiders tend to do well for my viewers. Cause I think at that point I had two, two of my best videos had been about wolf spiders. I'm like, well, 00:27:11.60 Spencer I'd be, I'd be stupid to let this wall spider go. I need to film something with it. but I don't know what yet. And so I was talking to my buddy, Jack, and Jack was at the time the guy who did all the bites and stings besides brave wilderness, because he did a lot of like myth busting bites and stings where he would, you know, he would take the worst painful stings. he He did a black widow, he did a brown recluse, and he would basically show this is what actually happens to you if you're bitten or stung by this, this, or this. 00:27:36.18 Spencer And what I hadn't seen much of was people testing common stuff, stuff that you'd see in your backyard biting and stinging you. I saw a lot of the the really scary, dangerous stuff, but I didn't see a lot of this common, well, what actually happens if a wolf spider bites you? 00:27:51.83 Spencer because that's something you might actually see in your backyard. You know, it's not, not a black widow or brown recluse. It's not scary on that level, but it's a big spider that scares a lot of people. I think people would want to know what happens if this thing bites you. So I was talking to Jack and I'm like, maybe I will test this. And he's like, yeah, you should do it. You should do it. And so I kind of worked up the nerve and I'm out the next day trying to film this thing biting me and 00:28:15.98 iandawsonmackay As you do. 00:28:16.69 Spencer It was, uh, yeah. Um, and I'm out there. No, no, no, boy. Not right now. Okay. My dog just locked himself in. Um, 00:28:29.51 Spencer but I'm out there like trying to get this thing to bite me and it's taking forever. I have the camera rolling. It took like 20 minutes for this wolf spider to finally bite me. I'm like, well, that needs to be part of the story because not only did this bite not hurt that bad, but it took forever for the spider to actually bite. People would want to know that, that I'm sitting here trying to make this spider bite me and it won't bite because people think, oh, it's a big scary spider. It's going to bite me. That's like the, one of the first thing that pops in their head. So when I made that video, I put it together. 00:29:00.31 Spencer and And I thought it would do above average. I didn't think it was gonna be like a crazy breakout video or anything um So it was that Saturday night um At that point my videos were going out at 6 p.m. So I was working when the video went live and It was July 2nd our small town actually decided to have their 4th of July celebration That night instead of Monday because the weather was supposed to be really bad on Monday and everyone was home on Saturday It's like well might as well And so it was 8 p.m. We decided to close the restaurant early because it was slow, because the traffic was kind of stopping because people are setting up their cars and stuff to watch the fireworks. 00:29:41.37 Spencer And we went outside to watch the fireworks cause we're like, well, we're closed. We can just chill for a minute before we clean up. And I'm sitting on the bench and I get a text from my buddy, Zach, um, uh, the guy who runs life's wild adventures. That was the guy who I was editing for. And he's like, Hey, you're a, you're Wolf Spider videos doing pretty good, isn't it? And I'm like, what do you mean? And so I look and. 00:30:04.31 Spencer For context, at this point in my career, a good first day for a video was like 2000 views. That was a really good day. Typical was more like 500 to a thousand, but a really good day was 2000 views for the first 24 hours. It had been up for two hours and it was already over 3000 views and climbing. And I'm just sitting there like, oh, that's special. 00:30:33.10 Spencer And it just continued to just roll. It was my fastest video to 100,000 views. It was my first one to be over five digits in the first 24 hours. And what I noticed was the systems that I had built where i I call it the content highway, where I have these series that are designed to be like high traffic movers. And then they have at the end of every video, I have them send to something else. 00:30:57.59 Spencer Um, what I choose to send to is usually based on like you have a content, like a big interstate style, like stream of videos. And then I have these exits that take people off to more story driven or more obscure things that I think they'll really find interesting, but might not, they might not be like viral or discoverable on their own. 00:31:19.52 Spencer And I noticed that not only was this video blowing up, but everything on the channel was coming alive. It was like almost like a heartbeat. the The viral video was the heart pumping blood to the extremities of my channel. And my baseline views per day went from like 2000 a day to 15,000 in the first week of that video. And the second week it went from 15,000 to 30,000 views a day. 00:31:48.00 Spencer And it was like I was now making more money per day than I made on a typical night bartending. And it was like, well, i I don't need to work anymore. 00:31:56.97 iandawsonmackay Peace. 00:31:58.99 Spencer I can just do YouTube. um So it was it was it was crazy, but but that's kind of how it progressed. 00:32:07.83 iandawsonmackay I love that. I love how, because everybody assumes, you know, these like content creators are, you're just born and that's it. You're made to do it. But a lot of times it's you find a pivot point of pain where you just think, I need to make a change. 00:32:21.97 iandawsonmackay You know, you kind of put up a job up to that point because you're very similar to me. I mean, I was, went off to college, hated it. I was deeply homesick, deeply unhappy. Did a HND, like a higher national diploma here, and then thought, 00:32:35.47 iandawsonmackay I don't want to do this. It's low pay. It's crap. It's not what I want to do. Stupidly, I didn't go into itching my creative passions. I kind of just stayed and went into a job. And now, 12 years later, I'm just coming out and going, I want to change. I want to do it. And that's why you find people like you very inspiring. Because I think moms tend to do, they want you to be happy. Where dads kind of see it as, I can understand a job. I can understand a career. 00:33:04.22 iandawsonmackay that makes, you know, it's more a logical sense. I'm trying to get as into that moment of, what do you mean this? No, I don't understand how you're going to do this, affiliate sales and stuff. 00:33:13.54 Spencer Mm hmm. 00:33:13.52 iandawsonmackay And I can't for the life of me work out SEO. ah yeah you know I had interview all these amazing people, but I can't seem to market it to create a community. That's my kind of major bug bait at the minute. 00:33:25.42 iandawsonmackay But you've talked about going out with just your camera. You know, you've seen a snake. You know, it's just like these opportunities. You trial, you fail, you trial, you fail. ah Exactly. And it's how do you think is that what puts people off? Do you think starting these careers because they think you've got to have a state of the art camera, you've got to have these codes, you got to have these back door friendships with YouTube to be successful rather than just try, fail, try, fail. And then eventually one thing clicks. Is that what you think puts people off? 00:33:57.23 Spencer I see a couple different like main motifs of what people are usually afraid of. Biggest one is risk aversion. They're like, it's gonna be a lot of work. It's gonna be a lot of, they see the trial and error and they're like, I don't have time to do the trial and error. 00:34:13.92 Spencer to get it to work, I need to work now, or it's just not going to be viable. I see people say, oh, it's too saturated. um YouTube is too saturated. Well, you know, how can I make a splash in this totally saturated thing? And then I see people who are just they think it's totally luck. You have to either know somebody or just be born into it. um I'll address all three of those because I can pretty much debunk them all. I mean, I'm sure there's a little bit of a luck component, but the luck is more The luck isn't whether anybody can do it. 00:34:46.72 Spencer i think I think anybody can. It's just a matter of how long it will take. I don't think you can control where in the learning curve you start. And the learning curve is ah is a very necessary part. 00:34:59.44 Spencer but But the first one being the time. The time's gonna pass anyway. And if you actually want to do something, I think you'll find a way to do it. 00:35:05.56 iandawsonmackay yeah 00:35:10.18 Spencer And it's it's very cliche, right? But it's like, I was, the reason I chose wildlife as my topic to make videos on, cause I knew that I needed to make videos. I have been, like you said earlier, you mentioned it, it feels like I was destined to be a YouTuber. 00:35:24.07 Spencer And I don't like the words destined or like, I don't like, I don't like to call something a calling. It just, it just a little too spiritual for my tastes. I'm a very, very analytical person, but it's like, for lack of better word, you ever since I discovered what YouTube was, YouTube kind of followed me around. 00:35:34.21 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 00:35:40.59 Spencer It was like, It was that thing that was like that, like that brain worm that I could never shake. Right. I always found myself coming back to YouTube in some way, way or way, shape or form with my hobbies. If I was learning a new skill, I would make a YouTube channel about that skill. So when I was learning how to make video games in middle school, the natural thing was, well, I really liked programming video games. There are other people who like programming video games. I want to show them some of the cool things I've been able to make and do tutorials on how to make video games like this, like my first ever viral video that I ever made. 00:36:17.53 Spencer Do you remember Flappy Bird? The mobile game with a little bird that bounced around and everyone would rage because it was like after a certain point it would get really hard and everyone had their like rage compilation of Flappy Bird. 00:36:20.41 iandawsonmackay Oh, yeah. 00:36:28.44 Spencer It was like 2011, 12, something like that. um And I'm like, 00:36:32.97 iandawsonmackay Yeah, you can't move for videos a lot, yeah. 00:36:35.86 Spencer And I was like, it's such a simple game. i could probably I could probably make that game. And I did a ah video where it was like 16-year-old makes Flappy Bird in 12 minutes or something. I think that was what it was called. And I just made a copy of Flappy Bird in like 12 minutes. And I posted that to YouTube and it got like 10,000 views in the first week. And that was viral for me at the time. So I was like, holy crap, what? Like, you know. 00:36:58.48 Spencer um But then on that same video on that same channel, that video and that same channel um i because I got pretty good at making video games in late middle school, early high school, i learned how to I learned common problems that I had and I learned how to solve them. So I would make videos that solved the problems that I had solved and those would also get thousands of views. um I ended up killing that channel um because i just I just didn't have the passion for game design anymore. but every time I had a new skill that I was getting into or a new hobby I was getting into, pretty naturally some sort of YouTube channel would follow. And in college, after that after that like relationship where I was talking to that girl and she was telling me how you could make money on YouTube, I was studying you know those like YouTube gurus. They're like, make sure you have a niche, make sure you have a specific type of video you're making. And I'm like, okay, so what do I make videos about? And 00:37:58.54 Spencer the um The biggest thing was figuring out what to make videos about. That was my biggest challenge. and The only style of video that I had known at that point were tutorials, gameplay walkthroughs, or skits. And I really didn't want to do any of those because they hadn't worked for me before. And none of those hobbies were big enough parts of my life anymore. The only thing that was constant throughout my whole life was wildlife. So I'm like, well, what if I, what if I did wildlife videos? Because I mean, this brave wilderness guy over here, he's doing really well. 00:38:34.39 Spencer and there's not a whole lot of other channels that are doing wildlife, surely I could add my hat to the ring and and do well. And so that's what I picked. I'm like, let's do wildlife videos. Since I'm already out in the woods all the time just poking around for stuff, why not just bring a camera with and film what I see and then just figure out how to tell the story in post. And so the time argument, I say, figure out what you're already doing in your free time and then find a way to turn that into a YouTube channel and you'll be able to make a YouTube channel happen. um So that's that's a time argument. 00:39:03.87 Spencer the the saturation argument, you can either frame saturation as a hurdle or as an opportunity. And the way that I see it is, if there's a lot of channels talking about a topic, then that means that there's buzz on the internet around that topic. 00:39:21.39 Spencer That means people are interested in that topic. 00:39:21.85 iandawsonmackay Oh. 00:39:24.02 Spencer And if you can add to the conversation, it doesn't matter how many channels are there, they'll watch yours too. So even with the wildlife space right like the wildlife space used to be kind of the wild west and now there's a ton of channels that are making animal videos but it's like every new channel that i see even ones that are just blowing me out of the water too it's like they're adding interesting things to the conversation they're doing something new they're adding something unique and oftentimes they're not even doing documentary style like i do they're doing create like these animations or these kind of funny skits that are also scientifically relevant and 00:40:00.97 Spencer They have these really creative angles that add unique and interesting voices to the conversation. And as a result, they grow. People find that and they're like, oh, this is interesting. I'm going to watch this too. They're going to add that to. 00:40:13.74 Spencer the repertoire of channels they're watching, and it works. So I'm like, the saturation is only a problem. And it's only a hurdle if you let it be a hurdle. If you're like, okay, this is where the conversation's at, how can I using my unique perspective and my unique experiences and my unique interests How can I add another voice to this? If you go if you approach it that way, like it's not gonna be immediate success, but like you'll be able to find success even in a saturated market. i don't I don't care what the topic is. It could be Call of Duty. There are millions of Call of Duty channels, but I guarantee if you brought a unique voice to Call of Duty, people would watch it. um And then of course, the last one, just the luck-based thing. Are you born into it? I think i think some people are definitely more naturally 00:41:02.23 Spencer Talented at like to storytelling or being in front of the camera or it might just be naturally more charismatic than others like there's people in my Personal cohort of YouTube channels that I think are way better storytellers than I am or way better presenters than I am um I the only thing I think that I use that makes me stand out from some of them is I'm a better data analyst so I can use I can make smarter pivots on my videos than they do but I mean, it doesn't matter what your innate talents are. The biggest thing is just figuring out like, and this is this goes back to your your SEO comments too, it's can I figure out an audience who is underserved in the space that I'm interested in? 00:41:47.67 Spencer and can I make stuff that resonates with them? like I had a conversation, um my girlfriend and I actually met this girl because she was doing graduation photos for my girlfriend and she was like, yeah, I really struggle with SEO um for my business. And my girlfriend was like, oh, he does that for a living basically. And it's true. like like you know i do a lot of like You see a lot of the the wildlife and the the wrangling and the adventuring and the story, the writing and stuff and the you know the the cinematography, but A lot of it all comes back to that SEO and analytics. you know How do I position myself? It's not with keywords. It's who is the who is the audience member that is your most ideal person that you're trying to target? What makes them tick? Get to know them better than they know themselves. 00:42:34.75 Spencer and the rest of the channel kind of makes itself. I mean, yes, like there's going to be some some gear grinding sometimes as you're figuring out how to best serve that audience, but that's where the reps are going to be. You just get better. Once you have the the psychological profile, the trick is just making a lot of videos and getting better at figuring out this is what they actually respond to. 00:42:58.71 Spencer um It took me a while to actually figure out target audience to a point where I was super, super satisfied with it. But once I had it down, um I noticed that... 00:43:11.67 Spencer my decision making with content was so much easier, my decision making with SEO, like how would I title a video? um And i'm I'm looking less at keywords, I'm looking more at the emotional response that I'm trying to elicit. So what is what's the language that my most ideal viewer is gonna respond to? That's the kind of language I'm gonna use in my title, that's the kind of language I'm gonna use in a thumbnail. And um that approach, 00:43:38.40 Spencer Once I implemented that approach, my baseline got so much hot so much hotter. um And it's it's even crazy too now, because I run a Discord server for my channel. And ah a lot of the most active members in the Discord, it is spooky how accurate my target audience profile is. These people, they might be different ages now. They might be different genders. They might have different, you know, 00:44:04.36 Spencer career paths, but the thing is they all have that similar background. They were all very similar to six-year-old Spencer. They were all like poking around in their yard as kids and they were just fascinated by the creepy crawlies they found there. And the natural world captures their imagination in ways that Um, nothing else does. And as a result, it's like, I know what kind of, you know, by understanding my audience, I know what kind of like outside references to throw in, you know, these people aren't just wildlife nerds. They're big into nerd culture. They like Star Wars. They like Lord of the Rings. They like video games. So I know kind of. 00:44:44.10 Spencer you know what what styles of references to make. I know you know what sort of comparisons to make. you know Instead of you know just talking about clinical science, I can compare and contrast these animals with well-known monsters from video games or pop culture, because I know what pop culture references my audience is going to resonate with. 00:45:06.46 Spencer um with with music choices too. Like like I said back and earlier in the interview, you know, it's not just the mood or tone of the music. I know what style to use. I know that these people like certain types of instrumentals. So I know to use this style of music versus this style of music when I'm putting the background tracks in to do different voiceovers and things like it's all like super built on that psychology and the more specific you can get on that the less the SEO stuff is gonna really matter because people will see your stuff and it'll it'll like actually speak to them and they'll be like oh this is for me and when they watch it they're or or they listen to it they're gonna hear that it's for them and they're gonna basically just connect deeper with your work and want to watch and consume everything you do. 00:45:59.38 iandawsonmackay It's really hard not to stop and start taking notes because I really, I was just, all of the, so many light bulbs just now were just popping going, you could change that video, you could do that, you could rewrite that. And I think that's what I, I've kind of lost the track of because I used to do that. Like my mom would always say, if you've got a problem, Google it because you'll see tens of thousands of other people will have that same issue. 00:46:22.94 iandawsonmackay And I used to write how, you know, like fix this problem that I have by speaking to so and so. And then as soon as I tried to do keywords, SEO, all that, you know, suddenly you're like. 00:46:33.97 iandawsonmackay Ah, my ratings have gone down, my viewings have gone down. And I think you probably would have helped so many content creators just now who are sitting, thinking, but so-and-so said I needed SEO. 00:46:45.19 iandawsonmackay So-and-so said I needed this and that. And it's just that set of skills into it, how to tell a story, how to record, how to sell it, how to inspire people. 00:46:49.63 Spencer Mm 00:46:54.74 iandawsonmackay And once you start fix a wee bit here, fix a wee bit there. That's the joy and also the the darkness of YouTube and content creation because you can spend all day tweaking and tw ah checking analytics and all that. 00:47:08.72 iandawsonmackay So how do you actually go about creating these things? like How do you decide what you're going to do? How how do you get over that fear of 00:47:16.83 Spencer -hmm. 00:47:19.24 iandawsonmackay If I make this video compared to that video, it might mean I have ah ah a worse monthly. Do you just let your passionate ah version of yourself out and because you know who your target audience is and they'll find the video? Or how do you get over that initial kind of do you make a content plan? how How do you set this up for going forward? 00:47:41.48 Spencer So I let both, if you can think of your analytical and your passionate like creative side as like your angel and devil on your shoulder, I actually listen to both of them. And theyre it's important to not release videos. like Don't make videos that you're not excited about making, because they're going to turn out crappy. like just just They're going to be bad. 00:48:04.13 Spencer but Also don't just make videos because you're passionate about them. um Unless again, it depends on your goals for your channel. Like the conversation that I have with somebody who is just doing YouTube as a hobby versus someone who's trying to make a business is very different. If you're, if you're not trying to actively grow an audience, then make videos you're passionate about and don't care about numbers. And like I always say with, with colleagues of mine, I'm like, listen, 00:48:29.21 Spencer If your expectations do not match reality, you either have to change your approach or change your expectations, you can't get both. And um if your expectations are to build a career, you do have to listen listen to the analytical side of of the YouTube thing as well. So when I'm doing content planning, it's it's kind of a detailed process because number one, I'm sort of, 00:48:56.25 Spencer I'm sort of dependent on what I can find in the field so like people have been requesting certain things for ages and I'm like well that thing lives on the other side of the world from where I live I can't just fly across the the ocean like next week and get it and then come back like it doesn't work like that and I hold myself to a pretty high standard of I want to only use footage that either I filmed or somebody I work closely with in the field has filmed. 00:49:24.59 iandawsonmackay No. 00:49:24.75 Spencer um I don't like using stock footage if I can avoid it with the exception of if it's like um footage of just like random stuff if I'm trying to like illustrate a point like oh I'm talking about cooking I'm not gonna go and just like cook something to get B roll of it I'll just go use stock footage of that or if it's like a lab setting I don't have access to a lab I don't I'm working on getting partnered with UNC where I graduated from um but I'm not partnered with a lab yet, so I don't have access to a lab where I can get my own footage of lab, like lab, like science work. So that I'll get you know stock footage of, but if it's of an animal or plants or anything like that, like things that I would be able to film in the field, I like to use my own footage. And so a lot of my ability to make certain videos that I know will do well is hindered by my ability to not get to go film them yet. 00:50:17.85 Spencer um But that aside, when I am planning content, I do a content plan. I usually will have, I like to have a whole quarter planned out, or at least a good idea of what that quarter looks like if I haven't filmed everything for that quarter yet. Um, and I will basically position videos in a funnel. So when you're, you're asking like, how do I know which videos to make or how, you know, am I going to just trust my audience to find them? 00:50:49.67 Spencer the The funnels that I build, I have like, I start with top of funnel. And the idea is that these are not just for my target audience, but for people who are interested in insects or animals in general. And what I'll probably do too is i'm like, well, what are people interested in with with insects? They're usually afraid of them. So I'll be looking at what are these, what are the questions that people have about insects or spiders? 00:51:17.04 Spencer when they see them, you know, is this dangerous? Can this kill me? Is this venomous or poisonous? So using words like that that they'll recognize and we'll get their attention and then using a really crazy creature in the thumbnail. 00:51:23.82 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 00:51:31.11 Spencer So like um what I'm working on this week after I finished this, this ogre face spider video that I'm editing today is I'm working on a video for the ah second up upload of of this month, which is going to be the most poisonous insects in the US, not venomous, poisonous. So it's a compilation of the five most recognizable insects that actually have poison to defend themselves. um And the thumbnail is going to be ah the larval form of a firefly because those things look insane, alien, like one of the weirdest looking insects ever. Because I know when people see that thumbnail, they're going to see this really bizarre looking face of the firefly larva in macro. It's super colorful. It's super strange looking. And they're going to see the title, the most poison these are the most poisonous insects in the US. 00:52:22.94 Spencer They're going to want to know, first of all, what the heck that thing is on the thumbnail and number two, which insects are actually poisonous. And my goal with the video throughout the story of the video is to actually surprise them with what things are poisonous and aren't poisonous and what poison actually does for insects in the environment. And if you can kind of see what I'm doing there is. 00:52:46.82 Spencer it's ah it's casting a wide net. So a lot of people will click on that. But then my target audience who is really interested in the inner workings of the natural world and how these insects and stuff survive, they're gonna really resonate with that message. They'll be like, wow, this is actually really cool. I never thought that this would be poisonous or that the poison did this for this insect or wow, that's a crazy way of using poison. And so once they see that, they kind of get the vibe of the channel and they're already kind of interested in knowing more. So when I get to the end of the video and I'm like, all right, if you liked this video, watch this video next, they can then they they trust me enough to click that next one. And then what I'll do is that next one will be kind of middle of funnel, bit more story driven. They get to know me more. They get to come with on the storytelling more and they're kind of hooked. And then they start watching basically everything I post. And so 00:53:41.56 Spencer It all starts with figuring out in a broader sense. It's actually what I was doing here. This is actually an old, an old diagram I wrote for myself, but I was kind of figuring out what are the total addressable markets in wildlife and what are the bigger, broader circles that wildlife might fit in. So it's like I have, I can actually like just scoot you over here. 00:54:02.32 Spencer little bit. So I kind of had um insects, spiders, and reptiles as like their own groups within wildlife and I just had like estimated audience sizes. I just said wildlife is like 60 million because I knew that um You know, Coyote Peterson, Brave Wilderness has like 22 million subscribers and many of their top videos were in like the 60 to 50 million view range. So I'm like, I'm going to estimate total market size as 60 million. And then I'm going to go, okay, wildlife is one part of science because you could also say wildlife is part of the outdoors space, but I'm not a fishing channel. I'm a science channel. So I'm going to look at the science space as a whole. 00:54:40.91 Spencer And like there's lots of big science channels like Veritasium and Vsauce and I think Kyle Hill and stuff and they have some videos that get over 100 million views so I'm like okay maybe science is 100 million and then that's part of the big education space. 00:54:55.71 Spencer and so When I'm looking at these like circles that are outside my space, I'm looking at what are the things that people are generally interested in in these spaces? Because if I can crack that, then I kind of know what topics or what questions to address that are going to be the widest nets to cast. And then I know how to structure those videos so that they're still engaging for that broad viewer, but also resonate with the target viewer. 00:55:26.17 Spencer And it's like, as I'm even saying this, I can, it's a very detailed, a lot of moving parts and it just comes with practice. Like it's going to be one of those things that you're not going to get it on your first try. 00:55:32.84 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 00:55:36.58 Spencer The people on YouTube who blow up with their first video, this is not their first channel. It's not their first channel when they're blowing up because they've been doing it for years. They've been working with creators more experience with them, more experience than them. 00:55:47.82 Spencer Um, this is stuff that you learn from. posting hundreds of videos over the years and seeing, okay, this works, this doesn't work. If I cast this wide, this is why a wide net works, so this is how to cast a wide net. Like you kind of, you you pick up on these things by just, again, like just really studying the markets that you're in. 00:56:09.60 Spencer and getting a feel for these are the broad questions that people have and finding questions that haven't been served well. you know This all goes back to that that game design space. like Flappy Bird was a viral game. It was a game that everybody was talking about. Everybody had their rage compilations on when you know when it was like big in 2012. So even though I didn't have the idea of making it go viral, I was like, well, it's such a simple game, and I like making video games. So what if I just challenged myself to code this game super fast, and then would see if the results followed? Sure enough, it was my first ever like it was my first time that a video ever performed to something that I was like really like shocked by. 00:56:56.23 Spencer and That lesson that I learned in 2012 was something that I took into the videos I make now where it's like, okay, what are the what are the conversations in wildlife that have lots of buzz, right? So bites, you know, getting bitten by scary looking things. 00:57:13.35 Spencer It's like, yes, that is a topic that has a lot of buzz, but how do I make it my own? How do I make it not just me screaming wrong on the ground, like Coyote Peterson? How do I add a real value to this that my target audience is going to really resonate with? And the story became myth busting creepy looking spiders and showing what happens when they actually bite you. 00:57:37.52 iandawsonmackay love ah I love how you like everything and that makes your channel successful is just you letting your yourself out. you know it's it's The channel is you your personality as much as because I think that's what we resonate with your videos is when we see Coyote Peterson in the safari suit or you see Kyle Hill explaining like atoms and in labs and stuff and you kind of go, okay, you know, so it's a wee bit, maybe I'll watch that when I can focus a bit more. But with you, it's just like a guy in a hatch, pair of shorts and a t-shirt going out and seeing spiders. And then you'll be explaining about how they're mis misconstrued. But then you also give a quick little bit about the the genome that it's part of. 00:58:23.01 iandawsonmackay um or you'll start saying about how this venom will act in this way. And we learn as we go, but we're also enjoying the fun, the the friendship between you and Jack and, you know, like the brothers and all these kind of people. And, you know, we're not seeing it in that kind of I know there's so much more. There's like licenses you'll have to apply for. You probably got a collection of like pipettes for collecting venom. You probably got containers for holding the animals. 00:58:51.92 iandawsonmackay your packed lunch, you know, you've all got all these kind of things into it. So it makes sense that you plan these things, but I think we resonate with you because it's just like a mate going out and then explaining to us something that we find as we go out there. 00:59:02.62 Spencer Mm hmm. 00:59:05.72 iandawsonmackay How much do you kind of think about ahead into your videos? Are you thinking in a checklist of, okay, the mannerism, the toxicity, the venom, the scarcity, I need to show the landscape, I need to, to- the-da-da or are you literally going, 00:59:20.93 iandawsonmackay I find this interesting. I know people are going to find this interesting. So we'll see how the animal behaves as we, and then create a story around that video. How how much do you get deep diving in? 00:59:34.02 Spencer So it's a little bit of both. I actually compare a lot of what I do. it's It's very similar to daily vloggers in the sense that what happens in the field can be very stochastic. I'm not totally in control of the situation. um So I have to do a lot more interpretation of what I'm seeing as I'm seeing it. So my goal is to be as researched as possible. I want to know as much about the animals I'm targeting as I can before I go out in the field, just so that I have an idea of what to talk about. 01:00:02.09 Spencer I don't want to get there and be like completely caught off guard. 01:00:02.67 iandawsonmackay Nah. 01:00:06.24 Spencer um So for example, I mean, Ecuador, right? Ecuador, we got the Brazilian wandering spider. We had no idea if that was going to be a spider that was safe to handle or not. 01:00:19.90 Spencer So we had to kind of watch her behavior every step of the way. OK, this looks like she's not going to bite us. let's see if she'll come on the hand and chill. 01:00:31.05 Spencer And like, you know, me shaking on camera, that was not fake. like I was like, I'm like, I could really be in trouble here. 01:00:36.26 iandawsonmackay I was surprised. 01:00:38.17 Spencer I could be in real big trouble here if things go south. But it was like I said, like, when I'm like, okay, I have this backlog of species of spiders that I've worked with. 01:00:48.58 Spencer And if I'm really patient with them, and I'm really gentle with them, they won't bite me. And the only time that happened, the only time that I ever was bitten on accident was the red widow last spring. And since then, it hasn't happened again with the Brazilian wandering spider. It didn't happen because it was just be really patient, be really slow and don't rush any of the encounters. And typically the spider stayed chill um with, you know, in terms of like actual field procedures, 01:01:18.85 Spencer We try to get as much B-roll as we can as we go. And that's something that I personally do and I teach a lot of my colleagues to do. I'm like, don't just film the adventure in post. Because sometimes what we'll do is if we're really on a crunch time, we'll we'll really just focus on searching, find the animal, and then build the story backwards after we've filmed it. 01:01:39.65 Spencer Um, but a lot of times I'm like, no, I want to get the, I want to get the raw reactions. So on a film B roll as we go, I want to get landscapes as we go. I want to get, you know, talking heads of like me just vlogging as I'm hiking as we go, like before I've actually found the thing so that there's actually some tension there. You can even hear it in my voice that I don't know if I'm going to find this thing. I don't know if this clip is going to be used. So I have like. 01:02:01.89 Spencer I usually come back from a trip. if i'm If I'm gone for more than a week, I have like a hundred gigabytes of footage usually to sort through. And the first thing I do is I'm sorting through all the footage when I get home while it's still fresh. So I know what clips are actually usable, which clips are not usable, which clips might be good for a future story if I ever do go back to that location and find the thing I was looking for. 01:02:24.47 Spencer um So a lot of it's just, uh, long story short is a lot of times we have a rough idea going into the field of what we'd like the video to look like in an ideal world. Um, just based on what the animal is, we kind of know, okay, the most interesting things about this animal are X, Y, and Z. So. 01:02:46.25 Spencer these are the three things we're gonna focus on with our general concept for that video. And then what we're gonna do is if we find the animal, we're gonna interpret its behavior as we work with it, kind of really do a flow of consciousness presentation. Like these aren't scripted, these aren't prepared. It's just talking about the animal, what we find interesting, what it's doing, and then trying to just sort of, it's ah again, it's a learned skill, but it's like, 01:03:15.85 Spencer finding a good arc to the presentation like um building into more and more interesting things about the animal and then bringing it down into like me personally I like to open with appreciation I'll you know when I find the thing oh wow look at how weird it is look how cool it is maybe a little bit of my experience like what it feels like to be hands-on with that thing and then I kind of have a jumping off point onto like a patterning or a certain particular feature of the animal that I find interesting that I can use to launch into more of a fact-based science discussion of like how this animal survives, what it's doing, um interpretation of its behavior. And then what I'll do is I'll bring it back home. Now we have context of this is why this thing is so interesting. 01:04:05.20 Spencer So now I'm gonna go back into appreciation. I'm gonna be like, okay, you know, I'm so happy we were able to find this and insert location here. um And I like to end them off with like a little comment like, oh, isn't that cool? 01:04:16.88 Spencer Or something like that before I go into a ah voiceover. 01:04:17.96 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 01:04:20.57 Spencer um So little things like that are are structural points. But a lot of the actual meat of the video is made in post. So I will have entire days dedicated to Like basically looking through my segments that I've shot in the field, looking through the footage I shot in the field. What, what did I say? What didn't I say? What more needs to be said? What do I think is too much? What do I think is probably not necessary for the story I'm trying to tell about that particular animal? And then I will assemble all that together in a final like edit, um, 01:04:59.62 Spencer the The biggest, one one of the things that I struggle with is actually outsourcing editing because my editing and writing process are so intertwined. I have to do some edits before I can write and I have to write before I can do some edits. So it's like, in order to get an editor, it'd be a weird asynchronous process and getting somebody who can be flexible with that is surprisingly tough. um Because yeah, like I said, like all these, 01:05:25.45 Spencer things are made in post. like ah It's very similar to like daily vlogging, right? you're You're filming your day, you're getting as much footage as you can of your day, and then you get home, and now you have to figure out where is the story here. um Because you can manufacture the story, but I've found that the times where I've done that it just doesn't come out as good as the ones where I let the story tell itself, and I put it together in post. 01:05:51.41 iandawsonmackay I love it. I mean, I could sell this as a content creator's dream just now because yeah because you're explaining how you've built such a jigger note of a channel. And I think that's what I love about it. It's like that time you you got bit by the red widow, it was just kind of, oh, that happened. 01:06:06.39 iandawsonmackay OK. Oh, but I could make a video on this. 01:06:06.95 Spencer Yep. 01:06:07.96 iandawsonmackay And I think if you went 01:06:09.08 Spencer I was rolling. I was like, I was rolling when it bit me. I'm like, I literally, I was talking to like my buddies. I'm like, you know, I talk a lot about how spiders are not out to get us. I'm not even sure if I want to release this video because this one kind of defies everything that I've said about spiders. 01:06:25.02 Spencer it I mean, it defies everything that I knew about widow spiders. I had never had one just outright bite me like that. 01:06:30.93 iandawsonmackay Nah. 01:06:31.20 Spencer And. I'm like, well, I'm like, we we got it on camera. I think it's an interesting story. I think there's a story there. Let's document what happens to me as this bite progresses and just see what happens. And then we'll put the story together and see where it goes from there. 01:06:47.35 iandawsonmackay I love it. It was that kind of moment of like, should I go to hospital? No. OK, I'm going to actually start. I'm going to start checking in and see how this does. 01:06:52.65 Spencer Yeah. 01:06:54.62 iandawsonmackay I'll record my symptoms. 01:06:55.12 Spencer you know 01:06:56.33 iandawsonmackay It's like that guy that didn't have Timmer's name now, who knew it was going to kill him to record his symptoms. But he wanted to show the help with anti-venom research. 01:07:07.43 iandawsonmackay So he sat and recorded the bite. I can't remember which snake it was. And you know, it was like this. 01:07:11.08 Spencer I think it was the boom slang. 01:07:12.93 iandawsonmackay ah There's dedication and then there's, you know, but that's what I think is like, I would love to see you do videos about the types of venom and working with labs and how it breaks down and show blood supply. 01:07:13.52 Spencer I think it was a boom slang. 01:07:23.78 iandawsonmackay But we would follow you into that role because we built up this understanding with you being look at what I found in my garden, look what I found in my house and you know you're that friend of education that brings us in so we'd follow you on the journey no matter where the channel goes. How would we start identifying like because a lot of people are oblivious to the spiders in their own home and I love the video you did on like what's in your home, what's in your garden, how do we start noticing the dens, the barrows? Because it seems like in your videos, you go out, you lift up a rock, you lift up a bit of wood, there's something under there. But I know that you could identify, well, there's such and such around here, there's prey here that's likely to be this for this type of animal. How do we start getting ahead of our arses and seeing what's happening 01:08:16.16 iandawsonmackay in front of us because I interviewed a macro photographer called called Matt Dug and his his kind of macro photography opens up about insects and you know you're suddenly seeing their world and their faces and the all the little interesting parts of them and you're like oh that's amazing. how How do we start paying attention and identifying the wildlife around us? 01:08:39.35 Spencer I think the first thing is really just, you'd be surprised where there is wildlife, honestly. You'd be very surprised. like People comment on my videos sometimes, they're like, oh, but I live in a high rise, so I don't have a backyard. 01:08:53.07 Spencer I'm like, yeah, you do. Do you have bricks outside your window? Is there lichen on those bricks? Yeah, you've got wildlife outside your window. um Even those small little things like that, like little bits of moss and lichen on like the bricks of your house, there are things that live inside the lichen. 01:09:00.45 iandawsonmackay No. 01:09:10.64 Spencer So if you buy a cheap microscope online, you scrape that lichen off, put it in water overnight, take the take the lichen out of the water, shake the water onto your onto a microscope slide, you'll see tardigrades, you'll see different like microscopic crustaceans, you'll see all kinds of weird microscopic life that's just right outside your window. So even if you live in a high rise in like you know London or New York City or anywhere, like there's there there's definitely life closer to you than you think. And I think the biggest thing is, 01:09:42.84 Spencer Get kind of creative about where you look. like Don't be afraid to look behind your toilet to see what's there. Don't be afraid to look closer in the flowers in your front garden. like every any Anywhere where there is structure, there is the potential for little living things to move in and find shelter there. Anywhere where there is resources. 01:10:08.41 Spencer Plants are resources water is resources anything that has access to water So again the side of your house if it gets rained on there is water there There could be resources little little bits of algae and stuff that come from the wind That have taken root there are taken up by fungi and build lichens you know there's all kinds of areas where life can seed and if you can look for those little places you can find things living there and the closer you look magnifying glass just physically getting closer um microscope whatever the more living things you're going to see and you'd be surprised how biodiverse the world is like it's it's kind of where my concept of a secret world came from because 01:10:54.64 Spencer um I'm really fascinated by micro habitats, so it's not just okay wait like a forest is a big habitat But you know there's different types of plants in a forest there's different sections of a forage of the canopy you have the understory you have the ah the humus that the detritus underneath the ground you have the bark of the trees you have you know different sections of the branch that have different like miniature environmental conditions, like how much, how exposed to wind are they? How exposed to light are they? Is there light in there? Is there moss there? um All the different changing conditions means there's probably different living things that are using that specific location in a habitat. So like 01:11:43.10 Spencer Even if you have the most manicured hedge in front of your house, I guarantee you there are probably things living inside that hedge. If you're willing to like actually get in there and look, you'll probably find stuff. The most manicured lawn, unless you're just spraying that thing to hell with pesticides, there's probably stuff living there. 01:12:02.22 Spencer and That's the perfect place to start is just your backyard. What little things if i I flip a brick over, if I, you know, look behind this board, if I see some webbing, if I go look, take a closer look at the web, what's living in that web? but Sometimes it's not even a spider. You'd be surprised there are insects and stuff that's been webs too. 01:12:21.04 Spencer um 01:12:23.64 Spencer Finding the little things there, it kind of gives you a launching point when you're out hiking to see other areas where there's little structures. And you can see all kinds of weird stuff on hikes, like even so I've been living in North Carolina for what, 12 years now. And even still I'll go outside and I'll see stuff I've never seen before, you know, 01:12:48.38 Spencer um Over time you get better at learning how to identify stuff like okay. This is not just a spider It's this type of spider in this family, but that comes up again practice. It's just um and And I think the biggest thing to to even take it back to like creator stuff too, you know I wouldn't say that learning how to identify every animal in your yard to family or species is something that's for everyone. Not everyone likes to do that. I do. A lot of my colleagues do, but not everyone likes to do that. Sometimes sometimes they just want to go out and see some weird looking stuff. 01:13:22.55 Spencer And that's fine. But, you know, if, if, if you're anyone who wants to become a creator, for example, one of the biggest things that I noticed is the stuff that you naturally gravitated towards as a kid are the things that you kind of naturally continue to like, they're like the gears that kind of continue to turn in your head. 01:13:44.41 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 01:13:45.39 Spencer Even, even if you think they're not there, they're still kind of there. 01:13:46.55 iandawsonmackay Yep. 01:13:48.96 Spencer Um, like the level, the level of, well, English Spencer, the level of detail that I put in with identifying wildlife is because I've always been just super attuned to what kind of weird little things are there. Like, um if you're familiar with the the cartoon show Gravity Falls, 01:14:09.24 iandawsonmackay Don't think so, it's not ringing a bell. 01:14:11.45 Spencer Um, it was from, it was from Disney, but, uh, there was this show its and it's like these two kids investigating like mythological creatures and stuff in their town. And one of the kids finds these journals that his uncle left, um, that document all the different mythological creatures and what they do and stuff. And like, like, uh, like the old timey naturalists, right? Where you have like, just those like that journal and it's all full of sketches and notes and stuff. There's part of me that's always wanted to do something like that because I love drawing and I love just. 01:14:41.53 Spencer Documenting these weird details of the natural world that I just find so interesting um In a way the YouTube channel is kind of that not fully but in a way it's kind of that um But that's because I've always been drawn to those things if someone was always into like basketball or something They're gonna know a lot more stats about basketball and a lot more about the physicality and the rules and how to play than I do um someone who's always been into 01:15:12.02 Spencer I mean, cars, for example, they might know a lot more details about how an engine works and how the different like mechanical parts of other machines that are not cars work, because that that's just kind of the stuff that they've always been drawn to and the stuff that they've always paid attention to. And like even the offhand details that they see on Reddit or in random conversations or something, those things will stick with them, because it's always just been something they've been sort of wired for. 01:15:39.40 Spencer um So like again, like I wouldn't expect anybody to go to the level of detail of like identifying tardigrades to species or something like I would try and do, but you know it's still really interesting if you just look closely at the environment around you, you will find stuff. 01:15:56.72 Spencer and the more you like look for patterns in the environment. like it's like It's like a video game. It's like you can see hints that there's stuff there. if there's If there's cover to flip, there's stuff there, guaranteed. Even if it's not the most interesting things, there's probably something living underneath cover. If there is structure that allows shelter and it has resources there, like a plant, like like plants are good for both resources and shelter, things will congregate there. 01:16:26.57 Spencer and just learning how to identify patterns in structure and cover and resources. I mean, you'll be able to, you'll see, I mean, your world will get so much bigger because you will see so many weird things just living in your backyard or in your local park. 01:16:42.91 iandawsonmackay I love that because so many people don't realize how symbiotic everything is, like how plants help insects, which grow the gri on the grass, the the wildlife that's around them. And I grew up with sheep, with we had lambs, we would go out with working dogs. you know So you kind of got to see like ducks and wildlife and knew about like how to cut down rashes and all the animals and the you know the wildlife that was just going to live around in the hedges and all these sort of things. And people would say, I didn't even know any of that existed. There was a show here years ago where it was 01:17:19.64 iandawsonmackay They took wild animals like you know cows, sheep, but etc. into an abattoir. It was built into a studio, and they would show you them killing it, then they would show it going into the boot chair, and then it would show the chef how he would take the meat, and it was like showing the process throughout their live studio. 01:17:38.09 iandawsonmackay And a lot of people are like, that's horrific, like tears strolling down and thinking, where do you think your food comes from? They didn't understand that we had to kill these animals. A lot of them were, you know, to raise, to herd. And that's what I think your videos are so helpful. It's you show the the education, the the myth, you break down the myths, you explain how the world is happening around us, that we are kind of just building onto their habitats, how we're affecting them, but there's so much happening around the world. And I think that's what is amazing about your videos. You kind of get us to appreciate, but understand and protect local wildlife. And for like you were saying earlier, is for people who are maybe content creators, 01:18:29.01 iandawsonmackay maybe you don't grow up with lambs and sheep and cows. And I think you've got like, ah you look after fostering in animals, et cetera. So I think you said your nine dogs, for instance. and you know Maybe other people don't have that, but they could have, well, what about wildlife in your local area? 01:18:39.43 Spencer Yep. 01:18:45.14 iandawsonmackay What about wildlife in your local sports field or your local XYZ? And I think that's what you were saying earlier is get out there and you could actually find something that could be interesting to somebody like me. I'd love to see the stuff like that. So how do you... 01:19:02.03 iandawsonmackay break down that myth because people go fuck that's got eight legs that's moving fast around it's too small i don't know what it's thinking it's zigzagging all over the place that's snake hasn't got legs i can't anticipate it it's not like a dog it's i can't see what's thinking you know all these kind of things in our heads oh they're gonna bite me it's gonna nip me it's gonna do x y z how how do you gets to appreciate animals, to see the beauty rather than the fangs, rather than the hairy legs. Because I remember we went to a circus years ago and one of the things they did was, anybody scared of snakes, and of course stupid people put their hands up, and they were immediately right in the middle and they were getting them over 01:19:45.75 iandawsonmackay you know, putting the snakes around their necks and explaining they're not slimy, they're dry, or they get them to hold spiders. And I remember the tarantula, the guy was explaining how it had two body two bodies with a bit in the middle that joined them and how you if you held it like this, it was absolutely fine. And it was like, whoa. 01:20:03.84 iandawsonmackay So this is my long waffled way of saying, how do you break down those myths? How do you get as to appreciate and see the education and the beauty of the animals and not go, oh, fuck, that's terrifying. 01:20:19.25 Spencer So the the first thing I do is I look at i look at myths on a case-by-case basis. so like Is this something that I can like scientifically disprove with a bite test or a venom experiment? like Can I visually show why this belief is not true? In cases like that, I'm like, okay, I can just do an experiment and test it. Sometimes there's more discussion involved, so something like a cottonmouth. One of the most infamous snakes here in the US is the cottonmouth. 01:20:49.33 Spencer and throughout the south, um like the southern half of the of the country, it's a common belief that this snake will chase you. Now they are what I would call passionately defensive, like this is one that's going to strike more likely than other snakes will. Like a rattlesnake, rattlesnakes will coil up, they'll they'll just rattle their tail at you, that they're very lazy, they'll just sit there and look at you. 01:21:09.91 Spencer um They want to conserve energy. Cotton mouths, theyll they'll gape their mouth. They'll show those fangs. They'll whack you if you're too close. But they'll never chase. They are you know a very spastic, very... um very wiry snake, like a a lot of the genus Agchistradons, we have copperheads and cottonmouths in the US and then down in Mexico and Central America, we have cantals. And it's the genus Agchistradon, they're called like the hook tooth um vipers. That's what Agchistradon means, is it means like curved or fish hook tooth in Greek. 01:21:45.99 Spencer um but they're very whippy, very, they can be kind of unpredictable and unfriendly snakes, but they're not aggressive. And so with things like that, I'll discuss why do we think they're aggressive? Like where does this come from? And a lot of it's rooted in culture. A lot of times a lot of myths that are more pervasive and harder to disprove with science because it's like very subjective. They're a lot more cultural. Like I'm not, I was actually doing research on arachnophobia. So the fear of spiders, I was doing a bit more of a deep dive into, 01:22:17.33 Spencer how arachnophobia came about for this this video is coming out this weekend it's um it's on the ogre face spider it's a really really bizarre looking spider and i make the case that the ogre face spider can actually cure your arachnophobia because it's just so weird and its biology is just so strange that the more you look at it, the more you're like, I actually feel bad for this spider. I actually kind of like this spider. It's goofy looking. It has really strange biology. It's unlike any other animal on the planet. 01:22:50.35 Spencer Um, you actually learn to appreciate it. So you show people how it's strange and how it's, you know, special. So that's kind of where the appreciation comes in, but also breaking down the science of the myth. So when I was re researching arachnophobia, I learned it's actually not evolutionary. 01:23:06.88 Spencer So we didn't evolve. we didn't We don't have a survival instinct that tells us to be afraid of spiders. We learn it from our parents and they learn it from their parents. And the reason we know this is because humans originally evolved in Africa, like two to six million years ago, somewhere in that and window. 01:23:23.39 Spencer And there is only one spider in Africa that is lethally venomous to humans, and it is not living in areas that early humans would have been. It's living out in remote deserts. It's not living in the like area where humans evolved. And then humans spread from Africa to Asia and Europe about a million years ago. 01:23:45.67 Spencer and Those continents also lack lethal venomous spiders. So for the vast majority of human evolutionary history, we actually warrant encountering spiders that could kill us. 01:24:01.24 Spencer We didn't start encountering them until people spread to Australia and Central and South America, both of which happened in the last 50,000 years. So for the vast majority of of human history, we were not seeing spiders that could kill us. So being afraid of spiders is not a survival instinct. Snakes, maybe, because there are a lot of deadly snakes in Africa and Asia, but but spiders, definitely not evolutionary. So we see that a fear of spiders is actually learned. 01:24:33.35 Spencer So when I approach it from that perspective, people are like, where that they start to think, where where did I get this fear of spiders from? And it goes back to their parents freaking out when they saw a spider in the house. 01:24:44.74 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 01:24:45.09 Spencer And so the case that I make in this video is that, you know, there's a lot of ah a lot of growing up as an individual. You have to overcome fears that were instilled in you by your parents. 01:24:58.63 Spencer in a lot of progressing as a society is moving past fears that we had culturally in the past, right? um ah Like imagine if the Wright brothers hadn't tested their first flying machine. We wouldn't have airplanes I wouldn't be able to fly to Australia next month, you know, like um Imagine if Albert Einstein was too afraid to challenge the status quo of physics We wouldn't we wouldn't have the knowledge of the world that we do now. We wouldn't have the space technology we wouldn't have any of this stuff if Albert Einstein hadn't revolutionized how we understand energy and physics like 01:25:34.94 Spencer um We have to challenge fears to grow as individuals and as a society. So learning where fears come from and seeing that some of them actually aren't based in real provable fact, it actually can get people to be like, huh, 01:25:54.13 Spencer Maybe this thing isn't so bad after all. And so when you when you lead with, here is why this myth is false and here is why we actually shouldn't believe this thing. And then you show them the opposite too. You show them, not only should we not fear this thing, but look at how cool this thing is when we actually take a closer look. Look at the way its colors look. Look at how weird its face is. Look at this amazing hunting strategy it has, or look at the amazing way it can move. 01:26:23.53 Spencer any any little interesting things that kind of just disarm them and get give them a chance to look at this creature in a different way you you can actually sort of reprogram the brain to go from fear to fascination like i was very afraid of spiders myself as a kid i loved bugs but i hated spiders and and that was almost why arachnophobia is so interesting to me is like Why am I afraid of spiders, but not insects, right? So there's something there. If I'm not afraid of insects, but I'm afraid of spiders, I had to have learned that because if I was afraid of all creepy crawlies, it maybe it would make more sense. But the fact that I picked and choose chose, picked it picked and chose which ones I was afraid of. um 01:27:08.20 Spencer It was it was like it was kind of weird shift for me that I'm like, okay, this I'm like, Spencer, you're being ridiculous. Stop being afraid of the spider. Just pick up the spider. And I remember like my my first time picking up a spider, the first several attempts, I'm just like, I had to like drop it. So like, like terrified of the thing. But like the fourth or fifth, I let it sit there. And I'm like, yeah, this is actually not unlike any of the insects that I walk on me all the time. 01:27:36.30 Spencer In other cases, this isn't that bad. And then from there, I was able to actually look at the spider closely and just appreciate how interesting it actually was, how cool its colors were, how cool its patterns were, um how interesting its locomotion was. And spiders became, like like within ah within ah within an hour, spiders went from being terrifying to really, really fascinating to me. and That's a journey with snakes, with insects, with centipedes, all those kind of creepy crawly things that I like to bring people on. Because like I can just see how the world changes for them. Because once we're not held back by our fears anymore, the world actually gets a lot bigger. We're we're we're you know kind of like... what I was saying with taking a closer look at your surroundings, when that cobweb in your house is no longer scary because there's a spider there, it becomes really fascinating. You have as a zoo exhibit in your house where the spider who lives in the corner, you go and look and see what bugs he's caught. 01:28:42.77 Spencer You know, that spider that's hiding behind your toilet, you're no longer afraid of that spider. You're like, oh, cool. That guy's eating the flies that come in my bathroom. You know, you, uh, you go out to your, your, your front garden, like the bees and stuff that are pollinating the flowers. 01:28:50.51 iandawsonmackay Mm. 01:28:57.66 Spencer You're no longer afraid that they're going to sting you. You're like actually sitting in there watching. Wow. This behavior is kind of interesting. They're the way they're checking the flowers and like they're scanning with those antennae. Like you, you just start to see more details of the world and, 01:29:12.58 Spencer As a result, the world gets a lot more interesting. 01:29:15.74 iandawsonmackay Because you'd be ah very annoyed if she didn't have spiders for flies, mosquitoes. And you know I think that I never thought about it like that, of what we have a fear of has been passed down. Because a lot of times it's like the daughter sees the mother freak out when the spider is there. It seems like, ah, that puts her into the next thing. And you have this great video. I think it's the the jumping spider. 01:29:40.47 iandawsonmackay about how you made that as so as as a pet and you know you have all these videos that I think kind of hit home of I remember watching one of your videos to which one it was when you said ah yeah I had the rachnophobia when I was a kid and I was thinking what's I think it was like you were holding a black widow spider at the time and I was thinking, what the, youre you're holding one of the most deadly spiders and you're like, yeah, I used to fear these things. Then you're talking away looking at the camera as you see a black widow walking over your hand. And it's, I think that you have this unique way of breaking down that fear, taking away the myths, taking you know, educating us in a fun and exciting way, but also seeing you develop it. 01:30:23.61 iandawsonmackay you know your own abilities makes us think, okay, if he can do this, and it carriages people, because in your 100,000 celebrated video, people are saying, you helped me get over my feet of spiders. 01:30:35.90 iandawsonmackay You helped my daughter go out and explore a backyard. Does does that give you that kind of like amazing buzz that you're helping change so many people? 01:30:44.42 Spencer Oh, yeah. It's, I mean, it's incredible. Like, you, it always starts and and like people who tell you, Oh, you know, i I never thought YouTube could get big or anything. I think everyone kind of dreams about it, even if they don't expect it. But what they don't expect is how much impact you can actually have. Like, that's another reason why I'm like, if you have an idea for a channel, I encourage people to do it because you never know how your perspective, your videos are going to resonate with somebody and completely change their whole worldview. um Like for me, it's like it's ah it's a big buzz to hear that I'm changing people, but it's also like, okay, I'm on the right track because the more people who are 01:31:33.55 Spencer overcoming their fear, the more people are becoming interested in these things. like The way we protect wildlife is we have to get people to care about them, and they need to care about them in a positive way, not a negative way. 01:31:46.98 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 01:31:47.44 Spencer So um one area where I often butt heads with researchers is because a lot of your more academic research types, they don't like that I lead with fear. They don't like that I lead with how scary something is or how creepy something is because they're like, well, that seems to you know, validate people not liking these things. And I'm like, sort of, initially it does, but my goal is to meet them where they're at so that they can click on the video. Like if, if I made a video about how 01:32:21.86 Spencer you know it's like You shouldn't fear spiders, period. It might get some clicks. But like if I go, this spider will cure your arachnophobia, people are like, yeah, fat chance. 01:32:32.34 Spencer And they click on that because they they're they're trying to prove me wrong. And then they're shocked. 01:32:34.66 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 01:32:35.67 Spencer They're like, oh, actually, you did kind of make me like spiders better. Or, mm-hmm. 01:32:39.73 iandawsonmackay ah You've got to meet them at the level they're at, not the level you want to teach them at. Yeah. 01:32:44.94 Spencer Or like again, though with the with bite with bite tests and like danger, you know um i've I've learned that I don't necessarily need to be bitten by animals to use the bite in the marketing, because there's certain things that are actually too dangerous to be bit by. Also, I'll do a video like, this is the spider bite to worry about. 01:33:02.70 Spencer Because people are thinking about spiders and being afraid of them and, oh man, this is the spider bite to worry about. I want to know what that spider is and why it's something I need to worry about. And so they click in and it's like, it's click bait, but it's like you still deliver on why they should worry about this bite. But you also tell them, here is also why you shouldn't worry about this bite. This is a dangerous bite, but it's not trying to kill you. This is not a monster. 01:33:28.19 Spencer This is why it's so venomous. This is what that venom is for. It's not for you. It's for its food. um And you start to see the these creatures in a different light because it was like the amount of comments I've gotten on. And this is actually my intent with with those bite tests. I had comments, people are like, I cannot believe I just watched you get bit by a spider and I am less afraid of spiders as a result of this. 01:33:57.29 Spencer And it was like, that's, that's the whole, that's the whole, that was the whole plan because I wanted to show that this spider does not want to bite me. It really doesn't want to bite me. Even if I'm forcing it to bite me, it doesn't want to bite. 01:34:09.59 Spencer And two, the bite isn't that bad. So even if you are bitten on accident, you're going to be just fine. This thing is not dangerous. It just wants to eat bugs and stuff in your backyard and people. 01:34:17.08 iandawsonmackay Oh. 01:34:19.56 iandawsonmackay Well, it doesn't want to give away its venom, does it? It takes so long for it to create it. 01:34:22.16 Spencer Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it's like. people are like, oh, it just it just disarms them because they're they're seeing this the most scary thing. ah There's a term in psychology. It's like, I forget the exact term for it. But it's a it's a therapy tactic. So they will basically have a patient describe the worst possible situation they could be in. 01:34:47.82 Spencer and have them describe it out loud. And when they describe their worst possible situation out loud, it also kind of gives that situation less power over them. But they also start to see by saying it out loud, they start to see how it's not realistic. So in the same kind of vein, 01:35:04.92 Spencer um I was like, how can I show people the worst possible situation they could have with a spider or a snake and then show them how it's actually not that bad or not that realistic if it were to happen? Like for a lot of the behavior tests, I'm not gonna test a rattlesnake bite, because that's actually a really dangerous thing. But I'm working with a rattlesnake, I'm gonna show how this thing doesn't wanna bite me, it wants to get away. It's doing everything in its power to get away from me. 01:35:35.56 Spencer And I'm actively messing with it. So if you're just in your yard and a rattlesnake just happens to come in your yard, it's not gonna try and kill you. It doesn't want to be there. It just happened to stumble into your yard because something disturbed it out of its burrow or something. Like doing these behavioral discussions, as much as the experiments, people start to see, oh, this is what this animal is actually like. It's not this overhyped monster that I've built in my head. 01:36:05.25 Spencer And it starts to kind of disarm them and break down their walls so that when I talk more about the appreciation aspect, like this is why this thing is so cool or so special, they're actually more receptive to it. And that's something that a lot of like the academic researchers miss um because they're like, 01:36:23.08 Spencer This thing is obviously so special, here's why. But I'm like, no, your average person doesn't understand that. They're afraid of this thing. They hate this thing. They actively kill these things. We need to first meet them where they're at, or they're never gonna get to the conclusion that you're at, that these things are actually special and need to be protected. 01:36:43.11 iandawsonmackay because that's like a lot of times it's like people are bit when they're they're building new habitats and which is essentially always been the snakes habitat so you know it doesn't realize is the like the cobra comes in in India to to eat them the rats because they suddenly have a pop you know like a market and there's a whole heap of old food around so then there's a lot of these kind of misconstrued things and I think this is where the beauty of like Chandler's wildlife where he went to India and he showed them collecting and catching rat snakes and then putting them away and working with the local populace but explaining to them well if you didn't put your rice sacks here or you tidied up this set of the this area you wouldn't have so many snakes in here you know and it they understood that you could catch the animal but you didn't need to kill it because a lot of I suppose a lot of stories are oh your uncle died because he got bit by a snake so snakes are the demons but when you're on you're teaching people to say well actually you just did that because a bit because of this this is what to look out for and I like your titles to kind of well this will fix this this is that there's a guy called 01:37:11.77 Spencer Mhmm. 01:37:28.16 Spencer Yep. 01:37:53.98 iandawsonmackay It's Clint Reptiles, that's his name. 01:37:55.88 Spencer Mmhmm, mmhmm. 01:37:56.86 iandawsonmackay He'll do, is a black mamba the best pet for you? Is the King Cobra the best pet for you? And you go, don't be so bloody stupid. And you watch the video, two minutes in, you're learning such unique things about it, but he still teaches you what you need for a good snake. 01:38:12.53 iandawsonmackay going to say husbandry, but that's not the word I'm looking for. Reading, you know, it's like you need to have the right habitat, heat, water, etc. But you also learn so much about the animals by watching the the stupidity of the concept of the video. 01:38:27.99 iandawsonmackay I think it's probably a good way of putting it. And I think Chandler was 01:38:29.77 Spencer Mm hmm. 01:38:31.99 iandawsonmackay When I've always been thinking about some of these bigger snakes, I used to think, oh, they're really interesting. And I think it was Chandler, he was showing how he had a white cobra. And it was the only one in existence in the atmosphere he was in at the time. And he was showing how all the animals were watching and trying to eat, that the king cobra was sitting watching him. 01:38:55.95 iandawsonmackay and all it was doing was watching him back and forth and you could see the intelligence of the animals saying and he was like it's understanding it's figuring out what's good on it's looking at me try to decide what's happening is it a threat and it was the intelligence and you're like that animal is amazing and now i watch it in his videos how all the others are just hiding in their battles and stuff or hiding in their enclosures well the his white i think Lucy, Lucinda, and it was just sitting, watching, analysing, understanding. It doesn't come near him. 01:39:29.20 iandawsonmackay But it was just that kind of, he was saying they can recognize their owners. It can recognize that it's feeding time compared. So if he strokes it, it knows it's not feeding time. If he opens it and holds something there, it understands its food. It's these amazing things about it. But what has holding these scary animals taught you about taking risks in life? How do you kind of look at an animal and say, 01:39:55.23 iandawsonmackay that is a stay the fuck away because you know how you sometimes you see an animal if it's brightly colored in nature it's a leave it alone because it's it's brightly colored which means it's not to be messed with um you know how do we kind of understand what an animal can be held how can we understand What's a danger sign and how do you kind of do it in real time as you're holding it to say? That's now a behavior. That means put it down now, you know, stop your video. How do we kind of understand the behavior of an animal ah if we're going to be working or doing a bit more of this? But how do we then use the attitude of taking risks to to just take more risks in life even? 01:40:43.83 Spencer Okay. So with, with reading animals in real time, the biggest thing is there, the first thing is, you know, what is going to act, I will take more risk with animals. I'm like, okay, if this thing does bite me and I'm fine, I'll be fine. I will probably be more likely to handle it than if, than if not, like, um, for example, one of the, one of the spiders in Australia that I'm still 50 50 on is the Sydney funnel web. 01:41:12.56 Spencer I have seen it done. I have actually seen videos now where people were able to free handle a sydney funnel web without being bitten. So I know it's possible, but I know it's going to really depend on the individual. And I know that if I am bitten by that, that's a trip ender. It won't kill me because they have antivenom and thankfully Australian medicine is free, but It is a trip ender if I'm bitten by that spider. 01:41:36.30 Spencer So that's one where I'm like, if it is not extremely cooperative, extremely placid, I probably won't take the risk. With something like a widow spider, a bite sucks really bad, but you won't die. 01:41:49.91 Spencer Unless you're like, if you have a lot of complications, something you might die, but like I'm a healthy healthy adult, like I'll be fine. 01:41:53.17 iandawsonmackay No. 01:41:54.91 Spencer I'll just, it'll just suck for a couple of days. So I'm like, I'm more likely to risk it with a widow, but I'm still like, I would have, I would like to avoid a bite if I could. So I'm looking at, you know, temperament. You can read, I mean, you can read temperament with a lot of animals just by kind of looking at how they're moving. So snakes, spiders, insects, centipedes. 01:42:20.93 Spencer very fast, spastic, erratic movement, they're probably a lot more stressed. That's just that's just true of of any of the animals that I've worked with. the more The faster they're moving and the more erratic their movement is, the more stressed they are. And the more stressed something is, the more likely it's going to misread something that you do as a threat and it's gonna bite in defense. um Snakes, for example, in order to handle them, you have to actually grip them, right? And gripping a snake, you have to try and make sure that you're supporting it enough that it doesn't feel like it's being carried off by a predator. That's the best way to keep a snake calm when you're handling it. 01:43:01.60 Spencer The problem is it's also very invasive to do that. So if a snake is already scared when you come on it, it might not let you get it into a position where it's comfortable and it will bite in defense. So I'm not going to simply just tail a venomous snake because a bite from that would be a trip ender or possibly even a life ender, depending on the species. 01:43:22.95 Spencer um But a lot of it comes down to behavior. If if something is um really, really, really erratic, probably going to leave it alone. I'll probably be hands off. I'll keep it on a stick. I'll keep it on a piece of bark. I'll keep it in a container because it's just like, okay, this thing is still an animal that I want to film and I want to showcase, but it's not an individual that I feel comfortable letting on my bare skin with. 01:43:50.55 Spencer ah With animals that are in the defensive position already like they're not being erratic, but like ah a snake that's coiled up That is, if a snake is coiled up, even if it's a non-venomous snake, that is the worst time to touch a snake. If it is coiled up, that is because it is ready to strike. It is ready to spring out and strike in defense. That is a defensive position. It's coiled up in a nice little tight ball. So it can literally see that the head is like in the middle, typically, or somewhere near the middle. So it can literally see all of its body and knows if you approach from any side, it can nail you. 01:44:26.76 Spencer That is defensive. That is entirely defensive. It's to keep the snake alive. So if a snake is coiled up, I'm like, perfect. I can just sit behind the snake. It's going to stay coiled up right there and look at me. And I can talk about the snake. I don't need to put even a hook on it. I don't need to do anything. If it's coiled up, it's going to sit there and be fine. um So a lot of that just comes down to like, it's just risk management. You know, the stuff that I am taking more liberties with is stuff that's not going to kill me. 01:44:56.35 Spencer um And the things that aren't gonna hurt me at all are the things I'll take even more liberties with if they're really defensive really stressed out I'm like it's bite is a pinch or it's a bee sting. That's fine. I can handle it anyway because the worst it's going to do is bee sting me. Um, if it's going to be, Oh, I'm going to be in a lot of pain for a lot of, for a few hours, I'm going to be a lot more observant of what its behavior is doing. And again, it's it's just, it's just risk, it's just risk management. So like in, in, in general, when I'm doing like when I'm, when I'm taking on a new endeavor, it's like, um, 01:45:34.00 Spencer how, if this thing fails, how far behind is this going to put me, right? Cause like it with these, with handling dangerous wildlife failure is being bitten. So if this risk that I'm taking, if I lose, what does that, loss what does that loss actually look like? And just like in the the case of like fears, you know, what is the actual worst case scenario? If this, if I lose at this risk and then 01:46:02.31 Spencer On the contrary, it's like, well, what is the upside? What is the best case scenario if I if i win? And then there's the the always the question of, well, how bad do I want this thing? Even if the even if losing is really bad, how bad do I want this thing? right So for back to the like the Australian wildlife, you know um we're going after some super venomous snakes. 01:46:27.57 Spencer i even if Even if they were the most cooperative, venomous snakes on the planet, I don't think I'd be hands-on with them because I know what the downside is. i would Some of those snakes can kill me in minutes. So I'm like, I'm not gonna just risk dying to this snake, especially when I have no concept that requires me to handle them. Most of my snake videos, I'm not handling them super haphazardly because Not even from a risk perspective, I actually like the way that the footage of the snake looks when it's on the ground coiled up. those from ah From a filmmaking perspective, it just looks cooler to me if they're on the ground in a cool pose where I can get detailed shots of their face and their pattern. 01:47:15.13 Spencer I can't get that kind of shot when they're in in my hands anyway. So even if I could safely handle it, the video wouldn't look as good as I would like it to look. So the upside isn't that high. The downside is really low. Whereas I'm considering the funnel web. If I can safely handle a funnel web, I know how hard that video will go. I know the concept, the story that I'm able to tell if I can if i can handle a Sydney funnel web spider and live to tell the tale, that is an incredible story. That is a story that, I mean, people would be like, holy crap, that is legendary, because so few people have been able to do it, that if I can pull it off, the upside is amazing. Like, I think that the video that I'm conceptualizing with that spider is made so much better if I can handle it, that 01:48:06.45 Spencer if the spider is cooperative enough that I think I'm not gonna get bit, it's worth the risk. Whereas a very defensive, very angry spider that's gonna guaranteed bite me, I don't care how many views that video would get, that's a tripender, so I'm not doing that. um So when it comes to using that same level of risk management in like other other facets, it's like, 01:48:31.86 Spencer You know, what is, how bad do you want the thing? What is, what is winning at that thing look like to you? What is losing at that thing look like to you? If, if the win is way better than the loss, then obviously take that risk. If the loss, if you can manage your risks that the loss is less likely and the win is very important to you, then I would say still go for it. Like there's. 01:49:01.73 Spencer I only have, right now my main focus is this YouTube channel. So it's like, there's a lot riding on me being able to keep making videos. um i've I've dialed back my uploads to two a month so I can make them higher quality. 01:49:18.36 Spencer um But it's like I'm working on scaling to the point where I can build other projects to help fund the channel. So I'm also not writing on just, do I have good ad revenue this month or not? um Because yeah, there's a lot of risk involved with that. But I think the upside, the the fact that I'm able to change people's minds about creepy crawly animals, and I can show people how interesting the world actually is, 01:49:48.32 Spencer I think that that's worth the risk of failing of, you know, if the channel gets demonetized or the people just lose interest in the brand, like, you know, nothing's forever. I know that this isn't going to be like, I would love to do it through these videos for decades, but I know that like the typical shelf life of a YouTube channel is not decades. So, um you know, I know that I have to pivot eventually, but as long as I'm in it, I want to do my best and the the wins that I have are so much better than the wins I could have had in any other career that it It makes it makes the risk of failing worth it I guess and and I think the biggest thing is only To the listener the the only thing you can only you can know what's worth failing at and 01:50:44.03 Spencer I can't sit here and be like, well, this is the exact framework that I would use to prove that this risk is worth it. Only you can know if you want the thing bad enough that you're willing to risk failing at it. 01:50:55.83 iandawsonmackay No. 01:50:56.10 Spencer That's that's pretty much all I can really, really say. 01:50:59.19 iandawsonmackay I always love like how in your videos you'll be sitting there talking about how scary something is, you know, like how it could kill a hundred thousand men with a bite and turn around, you know, look at you and you're wearing like a short sleeve t-shirt and a pair of shorts and you're kind of like, 01:51:14.80 iandawsonmackay you ah yourre or you're pulling up rocks and that, and you look across, and you're only wearing a pair of boots and a pair of shorts, and you're like, does he realize he could be wearing like you know like certain protective gear and stuff? 01:51:26.37 iandawsonmackay And I think that's what you could you we associate with you, resonate with you, because you're actually just like the guy going out and finding it in his backyard. you know You're not having to like tons of equipment, and oh, we need to do this and that. 01:51:39.80 iandawsonmackay It's just like, you could go out and do this in your backyard. You might not find. 01:51:43.00 Spencer I actually love those comments. 01:51:44.52 iandawsonmackay Uh, you know, so like. 01:51:44.84 Spencer I love getting those comments about... um I love getting the comments about like what I'm wearing. cause i mean this This shirt, for example, I've had this shirt for 10 years. like People are like, oh, you this guy must be sponsored by Nike or something. 01:51:59.36 Spencer No, i just like I just have a lot of Nike stuff because i been an I've been an athlete all my life and i just a lot of my shirts I've had for 10 years. 01:52:04.35 iandawsonmackay No. 01:52:06.67 Spencer like It's better being used in a video than in a landfill. um But it's like people are so quick to go like oh, you know, this guy is not safety first or whatever I'm like, dude like people used to live out here like the desert the jungle like people used to live here and they definitely weren't in snake boots they weren't in you know reinforced pants they were barefoot in like loincloths and stuff like people used to actually 01:52:33.67 iandawsonmackay light on the floating caves and stuff, yeah. 01:52:35.75 Spencer Yeah, people used to live in these areas, you know, like before the they're like before the Europeans came here and wiped everyone out. you like People used to live out here and they did not dress in armor or snake boots to go out here. They were a part of the landscape and they knew to respect the wildlife there, but they weren't like overly afraid of it. 01:53:00.35 Spencer I'm like, and I don't know if you know Star Wars or not, but it's like, I feel like the only thing that would satisfy some people is if I had a full suit of Beskar or something to go out and and look for these animals. 01:53:11.97 Spencer Like nothing short of Kevlar vests and chain mail, but I'm like, dude, yeah, I'm like, dude, like, 01:53:16.41 iandawsonmackay That like the bad door end and all that, yeah. 01:53:21.49 Spencer In a lot of these cases, the most important thing for safety is mobility. like I am more mobile like and also like temperature conservation. You know how hot long sleeve shirts are and long sleeve pants in some of these places? like I sweat a lot. I sweat a lot and I've known that for a long time. like I would rather be as thermoregulated as possible with short sleeves and shorts than be losing excess water that I don't need to be losing when I'm out here hiking. 01:53:51.89 iandawsonmackay And I suppose with a long sleeve in that it could actually get the animal stuck in it or wrapped in it or... 01:53:52.20 Spencer um 01:53:56.67 Spencer Yep. Mm hmm. It's also again, it's also more real estate. So if something were to go up my sleeve, you know, if i'm if I'm keeping it here, there's no sleeves for it to go up. If it's caught in my sleeve, that's where it would bite or sting or, and that could be bad. Um, but also, I mean, just like being able to be light on my feet and aware of my surroundings. Um, that's, that's more, that's safer than any snake boots or. 01:54:21.85 Spencer Gear that you can bring out there. So like for me, it's like I want to just go out and hike I'm gonna go out in the actual clothes that I would wear like like this is a shirt that I'm wearing like Unironically today. I'm just like this is the shirt I'm wearing today because it's a nice breathable shirt that I've had for years um I don't need to go out and buy a new wardrobe when I have shirts that last 10 years and It also just happens to work really well for hiking. And I'm like, well, this is the shirt that I happen to have on today. I'm going to stick the camera out and film while I'm in the shirt that I have on today. 01:54:55.70 iandawsonmackay I do love that comment. you it's like It's better to be in a video than in a landfill. And I think that's so true. 01:55:00.70 Spencer Yeah. but 01:55:01.31 iandawsonmackay it's like You don't need all this specialist equipment. You can literally make a video. You can literally make a channel with just yourself, your camera, um whatever your subject matter is. Are you OK for time? 01:55:11.61 iandawsonmackay Because I have pages of questions left. 01:55:14.60 Spencer um umm I'm good to go for a little bit longer, yeah. 01:55:16.59 iandawsonmackay there um One thing I did love was your your attitude of like, this thing's terrifying. I'm going to let it bite me. how How do you break down between what's ah ah Basically, how do we judge how scariest our animal Are we looking at the scarcity of the animal, if it's a wet, dry bite, the venom, the toxicity? How do you rate it on the scale of badass? Because you've got tears in your video, and I love your legendary series. 01:55:52.22 iandawsonmackay and 01:55:52.83 Spencer Oh yeah, i i I haven't done that in a while, the legendary stuff. But the actual tiers, like the bite tiers and the sting tiers. So the way I actually, I had like actual qualifiers for this. 01:56:04.53 Spencer um F tier, it's like your typical like F to S tier for a bite. An F tier bite or sting is basically it's incapable of biting or stinging. 01:56:15.23 Spencer is It can't bite or sting, so it's an F tier. 01:56:15.50 iandawsonmackay No. 01:56:18.41 Spencer um D tier is it can bite or sting but it's basically Unnoticeable like you'll you'll notice maybe you got like oh, there's something there, but it's not consequential at all C tier is and and it it has to do less with toxicity and more again with just what the experience of being bitten or stung by that thing would be because there are things that are Massively toxic that still wouldn't mess you up that bad like certain ants and stuff are more toxic than basically 01:56:50.36 Spencer most of the world's venomous snakes. So the venom is like ridiculously potent, but there's so little venom that it it hurts. You'll feel that sting, but it's not like bad. So like a C tier sting or bite would be, okay, that actually I felt that maybe I even have a welt or something from it, but it's not like consequential. There's no symptoms that spread. Um, it's just, Oh wow. Yeah, that's, that was a bite. Um, with a B tier you have, okay, that was actually painful. Like, wow, that really hurt, but that's about all there is to it. Like it it hurts a lot. Maybe you have some localized swelling, some localized aches or pains, but nothing like serious. 01:57:30.78 Spencer A tier is where we get into what I would consider medically significant, but not lethal. So it's like, okay, that is a proper bite. You might have some aches and pains downstream from the bite, maybe even some delocalized symptoms. Like ah I would consider a black widow spider to be an A tier bite from a spider. Cause it's not going to kill you for the most part, but it's going to make you wish you were dead for a few hours. Um, 01:57:58.39 Spencer A brown recluse bite, typically typically not conclusions not not a problem at all, but some of them can get pretty bad. they can You can have some systemic symptoms from those. You can have localized necrosis. On the higher end of them, they're pretty bad, so I would say they're probably worth eight here. 01:58:16.27 Spencer um S tier, so the reason i people got on me for that spider bite tier list, they're like, why didn't you put anything in S tier? I'm like, because this is a US based tier list, not a world based tier list. 01:58:27.51 Spencer Nothing in the US is typically going to kill you. Spiders that I would put in the S tier of spider bites are the Brazilian wandering spider. That thing can kill you in hours if you're not treated. 01:58:38.69 iandawsonmackay No. 01:58:39.64 Spencer And if it's a full wet bite, if you get ah if you get bitten by a Sydney funnel web. um They're not as toxic as the wandering spiders, but they have a lot of venom, and I almost compare their bite to that of a venomous snake than a spider, because they're a big spider, a lot of venom, and that venom is very toxic. 01:58:46.22 iandawsonmackay So does S Tiers done for shit? I've just got bitten by a 01:58:56.20 Spencer So it can, I mean, there are cases of people being unconscious in 15 minutes from a Sydney funnel web. 01:59:01.02 iandawsonmackay so there's does as tears down for shit i've just got bitten by ah 01:59:07.17 Spencer S tier so it's based on it's based on this old ranking system from like MMO games that a channel called tier zoo uses um a Through F or like your typical tiers a being usually your best but S is like special tier so it's like a step above a really like so like with like video game characters it'd be like you're a tier guys or you're typically your best characters but like there's some super rare super special super broken characters that make it into S tier with bites I'm like okay these are the bites that are just totally broken like totally bad if you're bitten by this you're just done 01:59:37.38 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 01:59:45.07 Spencer um With ah with snakes, I would say there's even an S plus tier because there's a lot of snakes that can kill you. And there's a lot of snakes that can kill you really fast and really gnarly ways. So like a rattlesnake, your typical rattlesnake, I would say is an S tier, but like something like an inland Taipan from Australia, probably S plus because that thing will kill you in minutes. 02:00:06.01 Spencer like 02:00:08.14 iandawsonmackay It's not going to be a fun time if you survive either. Yeah. 02:00:11.43 Spencer Yeah, cause you're going to have permanent damage. You're going to have like, you're going to be some guys, if you get bit by those things, you're crippled for life or you're in a coma for months before you finally come back and you're never fully back to where you were before you got bit. Like there are some things you just do not want to test the bite of. You just don't. 02:00:28.16 iandawsonmackay because that's what I always found puzzling was how some people would you would be talking about toxicity venom and you know yields and all these things and some people would say I don't even know the difference between venomous and poisonous and you're thinking really how how does the spider like or the snake bite you know because there's dry and there's wet and wet obviously is when it injects the venom and such stuff But how how does the venom or the poison kind of affect us in different ways? Is it kind sort congealing the blood cells? Is it attacking certain things? like how how Because these things are designed to paralyse the prey to eat. How does it affect humans that you find? 02:01:12.41 Spencer So it really depends on, so there's a lot there's a lot to unpack in that question. um First one being how the, how the, how the venoms work is gonna be based on typically what the what the animal has evolved to eat. 02:01:16.19 iandawsonmackay There always is with me here. Sorry. 02:01:26.78 Spencer So um a lot of times, for example, snakes that are reptile specialists are gonna have a neurotoxin. So it's gonna attack the central nervous system of their prey because reptiles have a lot more of a slower metabolism typically than mammals do, so you want something that can just paralyze them. Whereas mammal hunters, like the rattlesnakes, they're going to use more of a hematoxin, a blood-attacking toxin, to um 02:01:57.48 Spencer to basically kill warm blooded prey that have a fast metabolism, a high heart rate. Because if that gets in their bloodstream, it's going to congeal the blood or some, in some cases it'll either congeal and clot. Some cases it'll actually obliterate the blood. So the blood is like thinner. 02:02:13.37 Spencer But it's like it's particulate now. So it's all the blood cells are just being burst. They can't carry oxygen anymore in that those that particle matter gums up their organs causing multi-system organ failure. So how it again, it depends on which which which venom you're talking about. But typically, 02:02:30.47 Spencer whatever the venom does to its prey you can pretty much guess it's the same thing going to happen to humans so if it's a hematoxic bite that's going to attack the blood cells the way it kills its prey is the same way it's going to kill us because those hematoxic venoms are evolved for mammals we are mammals so you know You're looking at either our blood is going to be clotted and you're going to see necrosis and infection that spreads and kills us slowly and painfully. Or you're going to see that he that hemolysis where the blood cells are destroyed and turned into particulate matter. And that particulate matter clogs up your your organs and stuff, your kidneys, your liver. 02:03:10.13 Spencer sending those organs into failure, which kills you. um If it's a neurotoxin, you have two types of neurotoxins. Typically, you have your excitatory neurotoxins, which basically the case of like widow spiders when they bite something it just lights all of their nervous system on fire. It's an extremely painful bite but it also kills the prey because it just it basically sends the prey into shock. There's just so many muscles and things contracting because everything is just on fire and overstimulated that they just die, right? For an excitatory neurotoxin on a human 02:03:45.15 Spencer that level of neurotoxin can overstimulate our heart, cause our heart to fail, can cause your diaphragm to seize. So your diaphragm is paralyzed, but not in the sense that you can't control it because it's like the nerves are turned off. The nerves are so overstimulated that everything is just like seizing and contracting. And that's what would kill you if a really bad widow bite were to happen or something. With things like cobras and mambas, they have a more of a um a paralytic, so it's going to disable your prey and that's going to essentially attach to nerves and 02:04:24.50 Spencer cut off signaling. So you can't signal your diaphragm to breathe. You can't breathe because you're paralyzed. So then you die from that, but you basically go to sleep in some cases. Like um some of those some of those more gnarly elapids, if you're bitten, they're actually not unpleasant from what we can tell because you, they're they're like an anesthetic almost. they They paralyze and just kind of Disable you so you are unconscious and then you die um So im I'm sure it's not like a walk in the park We don't know because people who have died from it they they're dead so we can't ask them how the death was but um you know, it depends again on how the how the toxin works and then venom versus poison and 02:05:11.75 Spencer is venom is injected. So you have spines, fangs, a stinger, um in in Centipede's case modified legs that have spikes on the end that can inject venom. 02:05:25.26 Spencer um Poison is ingested or 02:05:25.52 iandawsonmackay Well, 02:05:29.44 Spencer like secreted so it's like it's something that can be like sprayed it can be ah in the skin in the point in the slime glands of the skin for certain amphibians um and if you're if you eat or touch 02:05:30.98 iandawsonmackay that's really... 02:05:44.59 Spencer the animal, the poison is then absorbed through your skin or through mucous membranes in your digestive system. And that's where it kills you. And it's the same thing. You have irritants, you have things that just are designed, they're not designed to kill, they're designed to just hurt and burn or sting. You have things that are like noxious or just taste or smell really bad. So that kind of gets you to back off. That's like on the low end. 02:06:07.31 Spencer and then just like with venoms you have neurotoxins you have things like you know certain species of newt that are really poisonous and if you eat them it will basically paralyze and kill you um certain fish same thing they have like glands in their body that if you eat them it's just so toxic it just paralyzes your whole body shuts your central nervous system down and like you just, unless you get like anti, I guess it's anti poison, antidote really quick, or like you're put on a ventilator until your liver can process it. And even then sometimes it's just so toxic that your body can't handle it and it's just as too much and good night, you know. 02:06:47.02 iandawsonmackay because that's what I used to i love about it was everybody would always say like about your lingering you know your your your bite was was there any lingering effect and that and I was always thinking a did you have any superpowers but b it was always kind of like what did you notice any changes in your diet? You know because you're used to do a lot of cross-country when you were younger. Did you find that kind of your fitness or your heart health, did that help you do you think? And also did you notice any kind of changes in what you craved like where there's certain vitamins and minerals that your body kind of needed 02:07:22.99 iandawsonmackay Or is your diet in a certain way that if you think it helps you with the bites, that it almost gives you your kind of internal armor to to do these kind of things? Do you find that you're healthier now that you've had all these bites, that you've kind of absorbed, like Bruce Lee absorbed the good stuff and got rid of the bad stuff? Or is it still just ah don't do this, let me do it? 02:07:47.65 Spencer ah it's It's definitely still a don't do this. 02:07:49.82 iandawsonmackay yes 02:07:50.04 Spencer um I mean, I'm definitely healthier than most. My diet is terrible. My diet is terrible, but I get away with it because I'm healthier than most. um So I don't know that diet really helps. I didn't notice I craved anything different. When I am bitten by spiders, what I try to do, when I'm when i'm bitten or stung by anything, what I try to do is hydrate a lot, because it will dilute. just like The more hydrated I am, the more it'll dilute whatever toxin is inside me. um So like I just push a lot of fluids. um But I push fluids anyway, because I run so much and I sweat so much that I'm in the habit of drinking a ton of water. 02:08:27.08 Spencer With, ah with any kind of like cravings or anything post bite. I didn't notice any differences. A really bad bite, the day after I might be a little bit fatigued but that was only with like the red widow and the giant centipede I was a little fatigued the next day. 02:08:45.06 Spencer um with in terms of like immunity so that's a that's a fun question that I get sometimes and the truth with immunity is you'd have to you'd have to expose yourself to one specific species of venom over and over and over and over and over again for your body to actually become immune or to like become more resistant to future venoms or anything. 02:09:01.02 iandawsonmackay Now. 02:09:07.55 Spencer um I've done a lot of bite tests both intentional and accidental on the channel but In the grand scheme of time, I haven't done enough of them for my body to really have any like special immunity or anything from that. And that's something that I can back up with my med, my medical background. I'm like, yeah, I don't, there's not really ah enough evidence that are adaptive immune system. What are you doing, dude? 02:09:34.00 Spencer um There's not enough evidence that our adaptive immune system can react that quickly to it. It's not like a virus where it's like totally systemic. A lot of these times the bites are just so localized that the immune system is just, it's the localized, the local immune system just kind of making sure that there's no invaders, localized inflammation, stuff like that. My body isn't. 02:09:58.74 Spencer There's not a big enough stimulus to my body for it to need to adapt and learn to ah deal with venom in the future. So it's not like it's not like I have like walking anti-venom or something because I have to be exposed over and over and over again to the same type of venom to build an active immunity to that venom. 02:10:09.74 iandawsonmackay Bye. 02:10:17.67 Spencer um So I wouldn't say that um my my immunity or health is anything special due to the venom tests. And honestly, like like, it's like, again, I wouldn't encourage people to go out and just test the bites of spiders. That's more my own morbid curiosity and my desire to myth bust. So like, there's really only two 02:10:46.99 Spencer maybe three spiders that I'm still interested in taking the bite from. And those are false widows, because I'm curious to see how they stand up stack up against real widows. um The yellow sac spider, because that's one people are losing their minds over. They think it's super deadly, but it's all the research that I've seen is it's not. 02:11:05.75 Spencer um potentially the whitetail spider from Australia because it's like their brown recluse. They say it has these terrible necrotic bites, but again, all the research shows that it does not cause necrosis, so it's a myth. 02:11:20.62 Spencer I'd be very, I'm like 50-50 on this one. I'm somewhat curious to see what some of the smaller wandering spider species can do. Like here in the US, our biggest wandering spider is the Florida wandering spider. It is related to the Brazilian wandering spider, but it's much smaller and there's a lot of debate on whether or not it's considered, it would be considered dangerous to people. um Conventional wisdom is that the genus they belong to is not medically significant, but that one is big enough. And I've heard enough reports that it might be somewhat toxic, not like lethally or like a threat to your life, just if you got bit, it would really suck. So that's one that I'm like, I'm curious to maybe test, even if it does suck, just to see for my own personal curiosity, if those things are 02:12:16.95 Spencer as dangerous as some people make them out to be, but that one's like, I don't know. But there's very few, very few spiders left that I'm actually curious to test. Because like I said, I just don't think that people should be taking bites from these things unless there's a very, very good purpose for it. 02:12:33.35 Spencer And I think that myth busting in the venue of what I do is, it's important enough that I'm willing to do it. But most of the time, like, and don't I don't see a need for it. 02:12:45.15 iandawsonmackay I would add a few verys in there. There must be a very, very, very good reason for doing it, you know? 02:12:50.90 Spencer Very, yeah, very, very, very good reason. 02:12:50.94 iandawsonmackay Because as I see a lot of these people, like, who, you know, they'll show videos of the milking snakes for Auntie Venom and for hospitals and stuff like that. And I can understand those videos are, like, amazing. 02:13:03.35 iandawsonmackay And its then you see this guy going, I'm going to get bitten by such and such to see what it's like, you know, like the Jackass style of video. And you're like, Yeah, that's just asking for trouble. What about conservation? How much of that are you kind of thinking about bringing in? Because, you know, there must be certain plants that we could introduce that would help us. There must be kind of certain charities that you could go and work with. um You know, like, is there species of habitats that you're concerned about? You know, how much can we truly do 02:13:36.97 iandawsonmackay as a person how much can we give to charity financially or supportive but how much can we make a difference in society give considering how many of these companies are destroying habitats like the rainforest etc what can we do to help the animals going forward 02:13:56.71 Spencer So the biggest thing is awareness. I think, you know, in general, ah there's this concept in economics called the invisible hand. And it's like, whatever incentives you put in place are kind of the way things are going to shift. 02:14:11.55 Spencer Right now, there isn't an incentive to conserve habitat. It's too profitable. 02:14:16.29 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 02:14:17.10 Spencer Still, it's too profitable to destroy habitat. And until until it's profitable to conserve habitat more than it is to destroy it, we are going to continue to see the destruction of our ecosystems. like A bit of a dark side of what I do, there is there is one there's one thought process that I have. 02:14:38.75 Spencer The reason that I'm so keen on telling the stories of some of these animals, especially the ones that no one's heard of, is because I know that in my lifetime, there are going to be animals that I have filmed that are going to go extinct. 02:14:50.28 Spencer like I am very aware that there are things that I have filmed that will be gone in 20 years. 02:14:52.59 iandawsonmackay No. 02:14:55.59 Spencer um specifically so a bit of bit of spoilers because this is a This is a snake that I've been after for like ages and it's been kind of a meme on the channel But the Eastern Diamondback rattlesnake in Florida, we actually were able to film them finally um this past ah September There are an estimated 3% of their historic numbers left in the wild and And it's a combination of people killing them because they're rattlesnakes and destroying their habitat because they're not like, there are certain species out West that can live pretty much anywhere, but the Eastern diamondback specifically needs very specific habitat conditions to survive. And once again, it's very profitable to bulldoze the habitat they live in to put up housing developments or supermarkets or things like that. And it's like. 02:15:47.70 Spencer The ultimate thing we have to do is we have to acknowledge that human growth is not sustainable anymore. Like we see a lot of pushes like, oh, you know, these different countries and stuff, their birth rates declining. I'm like, I get that your your economy doesn't like that. Like even in the US or like things like that, they're like, all the economy is going to be, you know, in trouble if we have an aging population. But I'm like, 02:16:14.71 Spencer you know what's going to be worse for the economy if we keep destroying the planet and unfortunately the the human population cannot grow to infinity and we're starting to see how there's this there's this thing in ecology called carrying capacity there's a there's a number that a population will grow towards and if it passes that it's going to crash because the the environment can't support that many individuals pass a certain number, I am of the belief that humans have hit or passed their carrying capacity. We're at the point where we do we do need to pull back how much we're trying to grow, because um like unfettered growth is gonna just continue to destroy the habitat, and that's that's the that's the the scary truth. What people can do on an individual basis, 02:17:06.23 Spencer is just raise awareness for creatures because yes, you can put money into charities and things, but you know you don't have a lot of control over where that money is actually going you know unless you're doing it yourself. It's not that I don't trust charities. I do. It's just that, again, like until it is Until it is more profitable to conserve, charity work can only only do so much. um So what we really need to do is we need to shift awareness. We need to get people to care about these things and we need to build a culture that is more about coexisting with nature than it is about exploiting it. 02:17:44.77 Spencer And the better we can foster that culture through videos like these, through conversations like these, through just going out as a person and just appreciating what's around you and taking stock of what's around you. And you'll you'll probably even see the more you take stock, you'll see how other things are declining. Like, um you know, fireflies are about to be put on the endangered species list here in the US. s fireflies, like the lightning bugs. 02:18:12.24 Spencer like As a kid, they were everywhere. 02:18:12.73 iandawsonmackay Oh, that's terrifying. 02:18:16.38 Spencer And they're now gonna be on the endangered species list. Like, as a kid, monarch butterflies were everywhere, and they've been on and off the endangered species list several times in the last decade. um And a lot of it's just due to habitat destruction. Like, this isn't even pesticides, this isn't even people killing them, it's just the habitat they need to live is just not there, so they can't reproduce. They're just, there's, there's um you know, 02:18:42.63 Spencer These animals aren't just like magical creatures that can exist anywhere. they There's conditions they need to survive, and those conditions are becoming scarcer and scarcer. So as it's just like economy it's it's it's the economy of the natural world. if the resources that they need to stink bug um the If the resources that they need to survive are getting scarcer, then the animals are going to get scarcer. 02:19:06.60 Spencer And so we have to to just develop a culture of being aware of the natural world, being aware of the things we share our space with and learning how to better share our space so with those things. Like um one city in the US that I think does it really well is Tucson, Arizona. It's a pretty vibrant, busy city. But if you look, it's built into the habitat. There's actually habitat corridors and stuff that go through that city. 02:19:32.31 Spencer It's not just urban like gridlock. It's built into the net into landscape. And people will actually see Gila monsters in their backyards, which is a crazy looking lizard. 02:19:44.56 Spencer um They'll see rattlesnakes in their backyards. They'll see endangered species walking through their backyard because there's actually habitat for them to use. And people have learned to respect nature there. 02:19:56.05 iandawsonmackay Mm. 02:19:56.40 Spencer If we can bring that kind of psychology to more of the world we can still have we can kind of have our cake and eat it too right we can have our our nice things we can have our big cities but we need to make sure that there's space for the other things that we live with to live as well because we need to live alongside them not just uproot them and and then be like well why are all the fireflies gone i'm like because we've destroyed all the wetlands they need to breed like it's like it's not really rocket science it's just we need to 02:20:28.41 Spencer be more conscientious about where we're building and how we're building, and that's going to come with people caring and changing of culture. Because the change you change the culture, you change the incentives, and it's like a more holistic approach of getting corporations to stop is going to come when people care. 02:20:48.36 Spencer Because right now they don't. like they They say they do, but they really don't, because they don't know. 02:20:49.57 iandawsonmackay No. 02:20:53.03 iandawsonmackay No, that was very well put and beautifully put. I mean, I think I interviewed Forrest Gennady and a few other people a while back and it was, ah but we talked a lot about conservation and it was that kind of how people only miss something when it's gone. 02:21:07.62 iandawsonmackay You know, Forrest has this amazing series on is it extinct or not and he'll go and show, you know, and it's like, imagine getting to the point where people only start caring about an animal when it's basically on its last legs and we can't rip out 02:21:08.30 Spencer Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 02:21:22.69 iandawsonmackay the only area that this animal can live in. 02:21:23.48 Spencer Mmhmm. 02:21:24.61 iandawsonmackay We can live anywhere, basically. But these animals need, like you're saying, in specific conditions, specific situations. And I think that's why it's so vital that we have people like yourself who are going in and showing these animals that you don't need to kill it. 02:21:37.40 iandawsonmackay It's not going to kill you. You're just encroaching on its habitat. But if you understand it and move it here and fail safes or ways to catch it and release it without harboring it, It can live its life. 02:21:48.93 iandawsonmackay It doesn't want to come near you. It doesn't want to hurt you. You have to really, well, basically, twat it about to kind of get it to bite you, as a technical term. 02:21:56.32 Spencer Yeah. Let's take the culture. 02:21:58.49 iandawsonmackay I think it's so sad that we've got to this point where we're kind of going, oh, I did like that but we're liking the pretty things, we're keeping the panda but we're getting rid of the animals that scare us which could potentially hold cancer treatments or you know like it could potentially help in a number of diseases that we're getting rid of things because of how pretty it is. and It's just we're going to we' are the generation, we're actually the worst predator of all because we destroy things. 02:22:30.63 iandawsonmackay I'm based on looks and we care more about social media likes than an animal that could potentially, that's keeping a certain habitat or our fish stocks or it's like, look at how we're overpopulating the fish. 02:22:44.10 Spencer Mhmm. 02:22:45.15 iandawsonmackay You know, it's like Faroe Islands, how they catch whales. 02:22:45.38 Spencer Mhmm. 02:22:49.81 iandawsonmackay you know, because it's just what we did. It's our culture. But people are trying to stop them because they're over popular, they're over efficient at times. And we have all these kind of different things of culture versus necessity, culture versus nature. And it's I like how you're bringing this and education to people. 02:23:09.00 iandawsonmackay But what have you noticed about the dark side of YouTube? You know, because your your channel exploded. I think you went to like, so you were saying about like 100,000 basically since COVID. You know, I mean, that's mental and it's very well deserved. You know, and you're so poly with your audience that you're always going, oh, that's a great video. Oh, that could help. And what about this? And you have a two way conversation with them. But what have you noticed is the dark part of YouTube You know, is it the suddenly you have people constantly following you, hitting you up on social media, judging you, you know, like what's what's the bad side of this or have you found anything yet? 02:23:49.83 Spencer So I've I've definitely heard of worse so the bit one thing is you're not fully in control of your results I mean you you can be within a It's not that you're like it back to the luck to so the luck discussion It's not that you're lucky if you succeed unlucky if you fail, but it's like, you know YouTube gives you revenue because it chooses to give you revenue so there's like there's always this always this level of you know, uncertainty months to month of where's my income coming from? and Is my RPM going to be good enough this month? Is my RPM going to be bad this month? If for whatever reason YouTube is not recommending my videos this month, you know, you have a decrease in ad revenue and that could be, you know, that can be very stressful living. You kind of live on the knife's edge. And like, you know, for me, it's like, you know, YouTube is doing quite well right now. I have visions to take it further. Like, you know, right now I'm looking at 02:24:45.85 Spencer you know what is my What is my path to 1 million subscribers? What is my path to 10 million subscribers? like you know And I believe these are engineerable goals, but it's like, you know at my current stage, I would say I'm pretty much a mid-sized channel. like i think I ran the numbers like at my channel size, I'm technically on like the point, the top 0.5% of channels. But it's like within the YouTube sphere, it's like I know that there is a much bigger ceiling of where I could be and where I'm at currently. 02:25:19.30 Spencer there's a lot of times where I can feel over leveraged. Right? So it's like, I'm a one man show. I have help in the field sometimes with people that I collaborate with, but it's like, I always I always laugh when I see emails are like, Hi, am I well backyard team? And I'm like, it's me. Hi. 02:25:34.30 iandawsonmackay I know a lot of feeling. 02:25:36.87 Spencer um Because like I'm like, I am the editor. I am the writer. I don't make the music, but I license all the music from different sites and stuff, and I have to choose which track goes where. um I do all the audio engineering. I do the research for my for my videos. I do all the hunting. I have to go find these things in the field. I have to do logistics for every trip, like for Australia. i i mean I had to read pages and pages of legislation on what is legal to touch there and what is illegal to touch. 02:26:10.16 Spencer So I knew what permits to apply for or what guides to hire to make sure that I can legally do what I do in Australia without getting in trouble, without setting a bad example. um You know. 02:26:20.30 iandawsonmackay I suppose it's like if you don't have content or something to film, them you don't have content to put out and yeah. 02:26:24.92 Spencer Yeah. Yeah, I mean there is so much you have to do behind the scenes and like that's thing I talk about like this stuff They're marketing all the strategy all the the analytics like what am what what goes behind all the decisions of what videos to make how to make them I mean it it is The dark side of YouTube is you can't turn it off You really can't turn it off and it's ah it's gotten me in trouble in my relationships. It's gotten me in trouble in you know family dynamics sometimes cuz like I 02:26:57.99 Spencer There's times where I will see the people that I collaborate with in the field on like production trips, they see more of me in a year sometimes than my family does. And it's like, that's what's necessary at my current channel size and the team, the team of one, but the team size that I have is like, that's what's necessary. And I'm working on scaling beyond that so that I can free up more of my time. but It is a very monumental lift to do that. And for every single channel, it's different. you know the The way the exact steps that I took to build my channel to 180,000 subscribers is totally different than you're going to take to build your channel to 180,000 subscribers, or someone else might take to build their channel to 180,000 subscribers. like the the The core principles are similar. like The things what will work and what won't work will be similar. the 02:27:50.44 Spencer there'll be patterns that you can follow, but the exact steps will be totally different. And so you kind of it's like you kind of have to to bullshit your way through until you find what works. And then you have to, each time you're building to a new scale, it's the same thing. It's like, I need to kind of just bullshit my way through until I figure out what works in the next scale. 02:28:10.38 Spencer and You know, you can you can throw strategy and stuff at it. Like it's not like you're just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. There's definitely like a method to the madness. But it is very stressful. It is very, very stressful. 02:28:21.05 iandawsonmackay Meh. 02:28:22.42 Spencer And it's one of those things where I wouldn't give this up for anything. Like this is this is exactly what I want to be doing. But it's like when I I prefaced that by saying. Make sure you know that this is what you want before you get into it, because it is it is so much harder than people think that it is and like You have, you know, it's not like, oh, I want to be a doctor, right? People understand what it means to be a doctor. It's hard work. And I'm not saying that it's not hard work to be a doctor, because it's very much hard work to be a doctor. But people understand it, right? They understand. So people can relate to you if you say you're busy because of med school. People can relate to you because you say you're busy because I i have work at this finance firm or something if you work in banking. Like, people can relate. They can understand. They have frame of reference. 02:29:11.11 Spencer people't People don't have a frame of reference for YouTube. They don't. So it's a very lonely journey with the exception of people you meet along the way who are also doing it because saying you're busy because you're working on a video, it doesn't sound like work to them. 02:29:26.59 Spencer They're like, oh, you're working on a video. 02:29:27.23 iandawsonmackay Yep. 02:29:27.67 Spencer Okay, well, you can you can pause that and come come hang out. I'm like, no, I can't. I have deadlines. you um So that's that's like, for me, with the the biggest dark side. but you know having what i've seen friends of mine deal with is you know my buddy jack he is getting completely destroyed by youtube right now he gets demonetized on videos that shouldn't be demonetized he gets you know there's this restricted mode thing where like if youtube deems your video as more mature or more risky or something they will 02:30:05.23 Spencer Not even age restricted. It's like a very, it's like a shadow ban, actually. They will they not show your video to viewers who are on restricted modes like schools, parental controls, things like that. But because they're not showing you to those, they will also restrict your impressions and how much reach your video actually has. So even though I would say Jack is a more talented presenter than I am, his channel is not performing as well as mine because YouTube is actively holding him back. 02:30:33.18 iandawsonmackay No. 02:30:33.43 Spencer And if YouTube decided to do that to me, I would have no control over fixing that because that's all on YouTube's end. And so there's definitely a real thing of, and especially if you're doing YouTube, and this is something I'm guilty of, but I'm working on fixing, is you have to figure out a way to monetize outside of YouTube as fast as possible because You don't want all of your eggs riding on a platform that you actually don't control. 02:31:02.12 iandawsonmackay and I can change this algorithm, yeah. 02:31:02.56 Spencer um youtube is YouTube is a beautiful place. It's a beautiful place, and like it has its faults, it has its you know problems, but I still think it's the best place for creators right now. 02:31:16.14 Spencer but it's still not perfect. And, you know, attention is great. The more attention you can get on your videos, like attention is the new gold rush. So they they say on all all all those business podcasts and things, but like it's true. The more you can get and capture attention, the more influence you have and the more likely you can sell them things like projects that I'm working on outside of YouTube. I'm i'm writing a science fiction novel series. I'm writing different like, 02:31:41.34 Spencer other project, i'm I'm hoping to get some like TV shows pitched at some point that are wildlife related, some that are wildlife related, some that are not wildlife related. like you know And those all those shows and creative projects, like I know that they're things that my audience would like, even though they're not wildlife related, because my while my and ah because my my audience is into nerd culture and into those kinds of things, I know they'll still enjoy it and I know that I can sell them 02:31:49.49 iandawsonmackay You'd be awesome at them. 02:32:10.71 Spencer those things because it will really resonate with the kind of content that they want to consume. And by building audience and building attention, I can still monetize that attention with those projects, but I have to have time to actually build those projects. 02:32:25.19 Spencer And so that's where the scale on the YouTube channel comes from. 02:32:26.62 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:32:27.35 Spencer I need to be able to hire people to help me make videos so I can free up my time to build other projects. And that's, again, it's it's it's the It's one of those double-edged swords with YouTube. I am very ADHD, so i like I like being busy. I like having a lot of detail in the kind of things that I'm working on. And I like those things to be things that I'm passionate about. But on the other on the flip side, it's like, yes, it's very hard. And people are like, you know it can it can turn your passion into a job sometimes. And that's very true. you know There are aspects of this this year on YouTube for me. 02:33:02.21 Spencer Um, you know, what happens if you can't find the stuff you're looking for, right? Like what happens? It's like, well, you just burned thousands of dollars on a trip and you have nothing to show for it. And that's been, I, I, I have been on, oh man, I have been on at least four, four trips this year that were not productive. 02:33:24.65 Spencer Like I got a couple little videos out of them, but nothing, nothing super helpful. 02:33:24.79 iandawsonmackay Sheesh. 02:33:29.26 Spencer And like, that's demoralizing. Like, like I've had times on YouTube where it's frustrating because, oh, you know, videos aren't performing that great or whatever. 02:33:31.31 iandawsonmackay No. 02:33:36.23 Spencer Everybody has those times. so Um, but there's also times where you, if you physically cannot create content because you're not finding anything film worthy in the field, it's demoralizing. 02:33:47.31 Spencer It's, it's, it's like, it's the most. Like, you're just like, I'm doing everything right, but I'm not finding the stuff that I need to make these specific videos that I know will do well. And it just, that's just the way it goes sometimes. So it's like, there absolutely is a lot of like, 02:34:06.77 Spencer there's a lot of risk and it's one of those things you you you have to really kind of think about what you're get what you're getting into before you get into this because it's very unforgiving, but it's it's unforgiving, but it's also very rewarding. 02:34:19.30 iandawsonmackay I can't. 02:34:20.98 Spencer So it's again, that... 02:34:24.27 iandawsonmackay I can certainly understand, because mean I do it all as well, and it's editing. And people say to you, what do you mean you're doing a podcast tonight? you know But they see watching TV as um like what a mainstream hobby is, whereas they'll listen to a podcast. 02:34:39.83 iandawsonmackay But the thought of a friend of theirs doing a podcast is like, don't be so stupid. you know you're like and like It's hard to kind of make people understand that this is a career. The way Onlyfans has become for some girls let's not go down that road because that kind of industry begs me about how you know you could go on about the them taking advantage edge of people or their money and all that who knows but let's not go into there but i could imagine you going out and it will maybe take you three days of filming to get maybe enough for a 20 minute video 02:35:11.73 iandawsonmackay because of catching the animals, finding it, because these things will want to stay away as far away from us as possible. 02:35:15.78 Spencer Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 02:35:18.19 iandawsonmackay And doing these videos, and I was going to ask you about when you've got a beautiful relationship with your siblings, you know, your parents must think you're crazy at times when you're telling them about getting bitten by this and that. You have all these amazing collaborations and that. 02:35:30.92 iandawsonmackay But what do you do to kind of downtime away from this? How do you shut this off? Because it's something I struggle with. I'm constantly thinking of video ideas, SEO, changing titles, this podcast prepping, listening to podcasts to prep for such and such. How do you switch off and just be you as a person, not you as a content creator? 02:35:56.15 Spencer so the short answer is when i figure that out i'll let you know 02:35:59.17 iandawsonmackay it's gonna ask on you 02:35:59.53 Spencer and by um madam 02:36:05.08 Spencer Having, I think it's important to have hobbies and or projects. I'm a very project oriented person. Like I don't like just having hobbies for the sake of having hobbies. I like to have things I'm working towards. So for me, like running, right? Like um the last two years of YouTube have been just so busy. I haven't been able to train. So I got really out of shape. So my next project is I want to be able to get back to running a 5k in under 17 minutes again. I want to be able to get back to running you know the mile in under five minutes again. um And then I want to go from there and get back to like you know the competitive times I was running in college. like 02:36:43.20 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:36:43.43 Spencer But it's like, i want i know what I know where I want to be fitness-wise, so I have a project to work on on the side, and I give myself these things that are not monetized, they're not business. I don't have, you know, life or death stakes riding on them if I fail. If I fail at getting back in shape, it's like, annoying, but like, okay, I can Like no one's going to like take my house or, you know, I'm not going to not pay bills if I push my goal back in another year. It's like, yeah, I'd like, you know, from a goal setting perspective, I want to hold myself accountable to those goals, but it's like, it's not the end of the world if I miss them. So it's like the other projects, it's just something to escape from helps me kind of keep myself sharp too. Cause it's like, okay, this is an intentional rest thing. And I think the biggest thing too is like, 02:37:34.57 Spencer Finding systems, I'm sure you've you've probably watched Ali Abdaal on YouTube, a big productivity guy. 02:37:41.27 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:37:44.18 Spencer um I love how he systemizes things and I love finding ways to systemize my process in a way that's works for me because again, like my content is so different than his that my systems are going to look super different from his but it's like, okay, like I have reduced my upload schedule because my data shows I don't need to be uploading weekly. um Most of my reduction and upload schedule was because I realized over the last 90 days and over the 90 days before that I tend to have 02:38:15.67 Spencer 10 to 20 videos that drive 80% or more of my traffic. It's like the old 80-20 rule, but like on steroids, cause like 10% of my videos or less are driving 80% or more of my traffic. So if only a handful of videos are actually driving traffic and driving results, why am I breaking my back to do a video every week? Especially when some of those videos, I watched them and I'm like, it was a cool animal, but this concept was kind of missing something for me. 02:38:44.79 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:38:45.26 Spencer So it's like, if I do two videos a month that have concepts that I'm like, that's good. I love that one. And I feel really good post like posting it. And it's also a stronger video that performs better. It creates positive feedback loops with my audience and with my own workflow that I just feel good making it. My viewers feel good watching it and everybody wins. And it's like, I've also reduced my workload by like 50%. 02:39:11.16 Spencer And it's like, so now instead of grinding, I can work intentional rest into my schedule. I can say, okay, past 5 p.m., I'm not working today or past 9 p.m., I'm not working today. Depends on the week, like this month I have to work later because I have to get two months worth of videos out because I'm in Australia for most of the next month. But it's like, 02:39:36.06 Spencer I can build these intentional rest blocks in where I'm literally not allowing myself to do work. I'm allowed to think about it. I'm allowed to think about work. Because sometimes like if you're passionate about it, if you're excited about a project, like don't force yourself not to think about something if you're excited about it. Because like what's the point? If you're excited about it, just just be excited about it. But like forcing yourself to rest. 02:40:00.56 Spencer is important because it keeps you sharp. you know So what I'll do is I'll have like certain video games I want to play. like I want to beat this one video game. It's ah it's it's still goal-based, but it's like these are projects that I'm doing. like like I want to watch this season of a show. It's still a goal. right I want to finish this season so I can you know watch this whole thing through. There's an end goal in mind, but it's like I'm assigning myself leisure tasks so that when I have this intentional rest, I have to change gears. I have to do something that does not work so that I can breathe. um I'm not perfect at it. i i'm It's not like a religious thing that I really stick to all the time. 02:40:40.67 Spencer um But when I'm able to do it, it's like I feel so much better when I'm getting these these rest systems in there too. Because like I said, it's like ah it's like being an athlete, right? You know, half of the battle and in athletics is recovery. You need sleep, you need to eat properly. You need to, you know, just as much as being on in the gym or on the road if you're running, you need to have time off of the muscle groups you're working so they can recover, so they can build. 02:41:09.50 Spencer you know It's the same thing with creative, you can treat your brain like a muscle, treat your treat your um your craft like a sport. you know you can't You have practice, you have training, you have output, but you can't do it 24-7 or you're gonna actually see negative returns. 02:41:29.11 iandawsonmackay That makes a lot of sense because just now, I mean, one of the things I'm doing is trying to figure out how to make a system of writing blog posts. I mean, i can I've got you know m templates for sending out emails, for links, for invites, for how to get guests, how to move them on, how to record, how to back it up and all that. But when it comes to actually producing it, I haven't figured out a way to make it fast to produce the show notes, the blogs, the the written bits of it. 02:41:59.11 iandawsonmackay And that is where I struggle, because my OCD and intrusive thoughts all immediately go, oh, no, you're not good enough. Oh, no, that's going to suck. And I put it off again and again. And like you're saying this, I don't have a system for not burning myself out to make myself to actually enjoy it. And that's a bad side of YouTube and content creation is You spend your whole day, your whole week, your whole year thinking about it, you never switch off. 02:42:26.98 iandawsonmackay And you can be in conversations at parties and people are going, hey, come on, get in the moment, because you can see you thinking about it in your head and your... And that's what I explain to people. 02:42:36.12 Spencer why I had that exact moment. 02:42:37.39 iandawsonmackay it's 02:42:40.47 iandawsonmackay and you're sitting on your phone and people are going, stop watching whatever it is and you're prepping for the next thing or your you're writing Evernote and reminders to yourself or I have my email sort of things to myself saying, edit that, add that, do that and mean it's so difficult to live in the real world once you've been in this world. And I suppose that's but. And you're just reaching the start of the journey. You know, you know we're near the pinnacle. You can have videos of fungi, animals, venom. and Even I think people, i could I would argue that people would watch your videos on your series of 02:43:19.67 iandawsonmackay running and getting fed for yourself because people, you know, you know, your audience and they would like that because you would how you style it. But people also like you. So they would watch your videos and say, anyway, I'm here, I would watch that because they like you and they want to see what else you do in addition to you and learn more about you. 02:43:38.87 iandawsonmackay And I'd love to see, you know, like maybe a video on the animals that you have in your home, how the animals that you do is part of your fostering out and stuff like that, learning more about you just as a person, like your habits, your Ali Abdaal kind of approach to life, your Tim Ferriss approach to life. So there's so much I think you're just getting there. And it's that shutting off of I had a girlfriend who said, um I was writing a James Bond series at the time, and she said, I'll have to dress like James Bond to get attention from you. So she put a shirt on and she said, do I have to wear a shirt to get you to come over and spend time with me? There's a more x-rated version of that, but we'll listen to that. 02:44:22.12 iandawsonmackay but I was kind of just at that moment of like, I was so focused in that I had forgotten what was happening in real life. At Christmas time, I can remember sitting writing notes to myself about a video. 02:44:33.94 iandawsonmackay and I'm sure you've done that, you know, birthdays and you're just like, I'd rather be in front of a computer than doing X or whatever. 02:44:36.27 Spencer a 02:44:39.72 Spencer Oh yeah. 02:44:41.96 iandawsonmackay And it's a slippery slope. but What are the questions that did hurt? 02:44:45.47 Spencer it's i it's It's funny because if it was like gambling or something, people would say a problem. 02:44:47.18 iandawsonmackay so 02:44:52.65 Spencer you know if it's like If it's something that people see as a vice, they'd they think of a problem almost. But like when you're building a career, it's like you know there's a lot of times people think of the creative careers, especially as like gambling is like, well, how do you know this is gonna work? 02:45:06.31 Spencer you So you sound like there were times where before I made it, I was like, I sound like a gambling addict. I sound like a gambling addict trying to get this to work. 02:45:12.76 iandawsonmackay Now, can I get that fix? 02:45:15.59 Spencer um So I really need this to work. 02:45:17.23 iandawsonmackay yeah 02:45:18.52 Spencer Wait, you're gonna ask a question. 02:45:21.39 iandawsonmackay Also, I was going to say, it's like that fix, isn't it? It's like that video only did that. but I know I could fix that. I'm going to change my SEO. I'm going to change the title. And you see, it's almost like people are going, I just need one more. 02:45:31.50 iandawsonmackay I just need one more. I just need that one winner. 02:45:33.30 Spencer Mm 02:45:34.12 iandawsonmackay And I'll be back. I can make the money back. And you're like, but I want to get my, yeah, like I can feel myself. Sometimes it's like the weight on you as well. But do you find Because like people always say about the amazing collaborations you have. 02:45:48.51 iandawsonmackay They always say about the videos you're doing, the series, the whole world of the ecosystem, and you're going to Australia, and you've got the whole world to tackle next. If you had to write out a list just now of alive or dead, your favorite collaboration that you could do, an animal that could be extinct, alive, 02:45:59.48 Spencer -hmm 02:46:11.13 iandawsonmackay almost mythical, whatever you wanted to do. What would this series be? you know Would it be Darwin, Erwin, which I noticed was quite interesting, how a lot of the names are the same. um you Would it be a mythical creature that you've maybe seen in Star Trek or something? What would would this perfect video for you encompass? 02:46:34.62 Spencer That's a hard one. i could I could think of a series. If I could collaborate with like Jeremy Wade. Um, from river monsters, that would be insane. 02:46:44.31 iandawsonmackay Oh, it's a great show here. 02:46:44.50 Spencer Cause a lot of my, a lot of my storytelling is based on river monsters. I loved the atmosphere that he had. And I loved kind of the same way that he was a lot more nonchalant about his expertise. 02:46:57.00 Spencer Like I am a, I'm a biologist. I studied this stuff. I researched this stuff pretty detailed, but I try to, I try not to be. in like zookeeper clothes and stuff, not just because it feels inauthentic to me, but it's also like, I want to show people that I'm not this super educated expert. Like I downplay how much I know, but The point is to show them that I am relatable, and I liked how Jeremy Wade, like yes, he's like a world-class angler, but the thing is, he felt like a regular guy trying to answer a question in his videos, and or in his in his shows. 02:47:34.11 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 02:47:35.26 Spencer And I would love to make a show with Jeremy Wade, but like a River Monsters with, you know, more like the biggest or weirdest reptiles and creepy crawlies in the world. 02:47:47.75 Spencer so like you know tracking down a Goliath birdeater in Brazil, tracking down a reticulated python in like Malaysia. um so like Sort of like river monsters, but like forest monsters or something. like Like the monsters that you find in the jungle, not in the river. 02:48:08.52 Spencer um you know I would love to have some kind of show with you know David Attenborough where we go to like the bottom of the ocean and find like the weirdest and strangest creatures there like I'm actually working on for next year. I'm sort of trial running it with with videos now. um The recent vinegaroon video is kind of how I want to structure single species type videos, or at least similar to that one. I want to start building a series on the channel that I'm calling, um the the the working title for it is Weird Planet. 02:48:47.73 Spencer And it's going to cover weird and deadly creatures. But my goal is to introduce every video with what I would consider to be a normal version of the animal. So like if we're going after. 02:49:01.64 Spencer the largest centipede in the world, which is like down in South America. So I would start the video with a backyard centipede to show this is a centipede in your backyard. Here's what we know about centipedes as a whole. 02:49:13.66 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:49:14.05 Spencer Now let's go find this giant monster one. And the idea would be, it's kind of like we start in your backyard, start with something that's like a frame of reference, something you understand and then go and find the extreme version of the animal. And then like, I get to kind of play with like, what's the extreme version mean? So it gives me license to cover a lot more animals that I than i would have thought that my channel would have covered. So like, 02:49:38.17 Spencer um my buddies and I were talking about like going diving with Humboldt squid at some point and Humboldt squids are like one of the one of the biggest squids in the world I think the third biggest and they absolutely see people as food so the way you dive with them is you have to wear basically like stormtrooper armor while you're diving it's a really 02:49:44.64 iandawsonmackay also Awesome. 02:49:57.64 iandawsonmackay I was out with the weird like chain mail and a lot. 02:50:01.28 Spencer Yeah, you have to you have to wear actual armor to dive with them because they will kill you if you don't have armor on. And it's one of the one of the scariest dives ever. You have to go out at night, but it's like super insane. How cool of a video would it be to go to start with like catching a little tiny squid and seeing a tiny squid like in a tide pool or something, just kind of swimming around. We learn about squid biology as a whole, and then we work our way up So there's a journey component, like a story of like us going to go find the thing, but there's also a journey through the the way that this Humboldt squid deviates from what a normal squid is to make it a giant predator of the deep. So you learn a lot about the animal, you learn a lot about the group of animals it belongs to, but you also go on this crazy journey because what I'm what i'm realizing I want to do more with the brand is I want to show how 02:50:58.27 Spencer reality is stranger than fiction. 02:51:00.64 iandawsonmackay No. 02:51:01.01 Spencer You know, I want to show people how the natural world captures my imagination more than a lot of other things. And a lot of that is because there's so many weird creatures, it's like encountering actual mythological creatures in the real world, like You know, some of the, some of the arthropods that I find in South America or Australia, or even here in the U S they're just so weird that it's like, it's hard to believe this is a real animal you're looking at sometimes. And so what I want to do is instead of just focusing only on that animal, I want to take the viewer on a journey that takes them from here's what a normal version of this thing looks like. Here's what you'd see in your backyard. 02:51:40.21 Spencer And now let's go into like the secret world and find this mythological version of it. And here's why this thing is so weird. Here's what adaptations it needs. Here's why the environment has shaped it to be this way. So they'll they'll learn a lot of things while still going on this kind of mythological fantasy sci-fi journey. And it speaks a lot to just the sort of goals that I have with the brand. And it speaks a lot to the kind of messaging that, again, my target viewer, 02:52:10.03 Spencer would really respond to so it's like it's a series I haven't launched yet but it's like a series that I know intuitively will do well because six-year-old Spencer would have watched the hell out of that and I can it's like and I can market it with the titles and thumbnails it's it's a very easy 02:52:20.58 iandawsonmackay I would watch that right now. that 02:52:27.86 Spencer sell to the general audience because like okay I can just do the most poisonous toad in the world people are like why is it the most poisonous what is it deadly like I want to click on this and find out you know the most venomous insect you know so little yeah 02:52:34.01 iandawsonmackay yeah 02:52:42.57 iandawsonmackay People would pay a ton of money to see that sort of thing. 02:52:46.77 Spencer And so I'm like, it's it's it's a format that clicks in my head. It's just, it's going to take a lot of research to actually deliver on it the way I want to. So it's like, it'll still be released twice a month, but it's like, you know, for example, a chameleon, right? A chameleon is probably one of the weirdest lizards you could probably ever come across. But. 02:53:05.75 Spencer That makes me want to think about all the questions I have when I think about a chameleon is like, well, what makes lizards need to change color? How do they change color? What is actually happening at a cellular level? 02:53:16.52 Spencer I think we need to explore that, but it's also like, what makes lizard biology unique from other groups of animals? Why is, why is it a lizard that can change color like this and not an amphibian? You know, um, so little questions. 02:53:27.34 iandawsonmackay I mean, you could even do like a teaching platform on that and people pay for exclusive access to that. 02:53:32.27 Spencer Yeah. 02:53:33.01 iandawsonmackay That's that's an amazing idea. 02:53:33.48 Spencer yeah 02:53:35.77 Spencer So it's it's it's things like that, that's that's where I'm, that's like my vision for like future projects and stuff and stuff that I'm actually actively working on. But like ah yeah dream a dream animal, dream collabs. 02:53:48.42 Spencer i don't I don't think there's a single dream animal besides maybe like really ridiculously rare species that I don't... there's not a single dream animal that I don't think I could probably pull off filming one day, um which is a very ambitious claim because there's a lot of stuff out there that's like rare. but I know that I surround myself with people who are better at finding stuff than I am. like I try to like you know network with researchers. I try to network with people who are like conservationists and out in the field working on these things. 02:54:20.13 Spencer you know i'm I'm never going in the field blind. um When we went to Florida this past this past month, um we didn't have like a guide per se, but we were doing like ridiculous amount of research beforehand. So we we knew what spots to go to. We knew what times. 02:54:38.13 Spencer and what temperature ranges to go during and I mean that made all the difference like a snake that I've been looking for for years like you were saying earlier like you know a video a 20-minute video might take three days to film this is a 20-minute video that took two years to film like I've been out looking for this snake so many times but all it took was just being right time of year, right time of day, right temperature range in the right spots. 02:55:06.33 Spencer And we had all the research done, all the work done behind the scenes that led us to this catch of a giant rattlesnake that I've been looking for for ages. 02:55:07.25 iandawsonmackay No. 02:55:15.37 Spencer And it just came out beautifully. um So I'm like, i'm like that that whole journey there tells me that, yes, if I'm willing to put in the work, and I'm willing to network with people who know what they're doing. I don't think there's a single animal that I couldn't film. If I wanted to find it, I could probably find somebody who knows how to find it, even if I have to pay them. like you know That's an investment in the channel. I'm willing to make that investment. It's more that There are definitely people I would love to collab with like Jeremy Wade, like David Attenborough. um If Steve Irwin was still around, man, I would love to work with Steve Irwin. Honestly, I would say like one day, I don't think it's out of the question that I work with Robert at some point. um Steve's son, like I would love to work with the Irwins in some capacity. Coyote Peterson, like, you know, sure I make fun of him sometimes for like his bite and sting videos, but you know, I know 02:56:08.06 Spencer on good authority, people who have worked with him. And he's a great guy. And I would love to work with him in the field and take him out and, you know, show him some cool wildlife, see what he thinks of those things. 02:56:11.91 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:56:18.20 Spencer um I love to meet his team like Mark Vins and Mario Aldecoa. And I don't know his last name, but their cameraman Trent, like I'd love to meet all of them and and work with them in the field. So it's like, you know, it's it's fun to work with interesting people. 02:56:33.47 Spencer um It's fun to work with passionate people and knowledgeable people, and especially if they are people who whose brands would compliment mine to make videos or make ah make a show with those people. like I mean, that would be amazing. 02:56:50.06 Spencer it's like You know, the creator in me, not just the wildlife person, the creator in me thinks about like, what are the what are the crossover episodes that would just go so hard? Like, if, you know, because I watch i watch a ton of Star Wars and like all these different, like, you know, sci fi and fantasy shows. It's like, you know, I'm always thinking about what makes these shows so special to me. 02:57:11.17 Spencer I'm like, what's the equivalent in what I do? What what can I do that would just to go that next level of hard for the viewers? Because I think there's something about that, like there's something satisfying, not just about making the videos but seeing people like seeing people just lose their minds when you release something like i'm working on i don't know if it's going to happen i really don't think it's going to happen no but like it's a shot in the dark but i tried it anyway i reached out to sony who owns the rights for men at work the men at work song down under like i would love to use that in the australia premiere 02:57:52.89 Spencer Um, I don't think it's going to happen because they're not going to, they haven't gotten back to me and I mess with them a month ago, but like, I'm still holding out hope. Uh, and I'm sure it'll probably be like ridiculously, ridiculously expensive when they finally do quote me, if they do quote me, but I'm like, how hard would it go? 02:58:08.27 Spencer If the opening scene of like an Australia wildlife documentary has that song I guess like the most iconic song with with like Australian culture and stuff with like that in like the 80s like just matter like the how I do that thing with like the videos where like I have the the location title and it comes towards the screen and like fades into the opening shot like how hard would that go like that opening the 02:58:17.76 iandawsonmackay Yeah. 02:58:33.08 Spencer Like, ah, it'd be so hard, but I don't know if it'll happen. I might make a director's cut with it and just give it to people who just does not, not monetize it, but make a director's cut with the song. I don't know. We'll see. 02:58:46.60 iandawsonmackay Because like some of my usual questions used to be, like, what do you want the evolution of your brand to be? And I think you know you just yeah you can see how a video creates another one, it creates another one, and it kind of explodes these ideas in your head. And it's, you're like me, you're constantly seeing, oh, I could do series on that, I could do that, I could do that, I could speak to that. Instagram and YouTube become a nightmare for me at times because they constantly give me new people to interview and ideas and promote. and like you know for you the collaborations or animals and one of my other questions used to always be about how do you stay on top of the education the research the but you're finding out stuff for your videos which then promotes you to create interest in the next set of videos and before you know it your ideas for our videos suddenly explode and 02:59:34.21 iandawsonmackay it and like I can see a lot of myself and you about how you approach life. I just wish I had your success. you know I would love to have you on again because I think I'm just getting to. 02:59:43.68 Spencer it it will it wont It will happen. um again Once you have the target audience nailed, everything else kind of falls into place. I used to hear that. I used to hear that i was on your end of things, and I would hear that, and I'm like, nah, that doesn't actually work. If there was ever a magic button to success, it's really getting to know target audience. and Like the first the first step is knowing who the target audience is and then creating basically blueprints of things that you think that they would enjoy. And what I always say is is execute imperfectly and fail forward. It's actually, I think it's a quote from a mentor of mine who actually worked at Video Creators, that ah channel that taught me about YouTube. um he I took one of their courses back in 2021 and he was teaching me like, you know, 03:00:36.33 Spencer Don't be afraid to, fake like, don't be afraid to, like, lose a battle, right? we're in the We're in the war for the long haul, you know? We don't fail until we give up on the channel. A single video failing, that's fine. Like, there's videos I post all the time that flop, and I'm like, ugh, like, I'm so frustrated, because I'm like, it was like so much work in the video, and I thought it was gonna be such a banger, and then it just like goes, pfft, and I'm like, ugh, but the thing is, like, 03:01:05.62 Spencer One video is fine. you know Ten videos failing is fine. The biggest thing is just figuring out, okay, these didn't work, but the target audience that I think I'm targeting, they exist. So what is actually missing from these videos that they're not liking? 03:01:23.02 Spencer and Like for me, I think it helps that I'm so obsessed with so many different things like psychology, for example, and behavior. Like I'm studying human behavior as much as I'm studying wildlife, as much as I'm studying YouTube, as much as I'm studying art and writing and cinematography. Like I'm looking at why I'm like, I'm studying my own behavior. Like I have, I have notes, I have journals full of both YouTube notes, like I think I've like probably between all the things I've written on my computer and physically by hand, I probably have over, got over 300 pages of notes of just like observations I've had about YouTube, about myself, about other people's behavior. And i I just look for patterns. Like what are the things that I can latch onto? What can I learn from what I'm observing? 03:02:15.42 Spencer And like the bottom line, I think it really just boils down to just being really curious, being obsessively childlike curious. and investigating questions, not being afraid of the answers to questions, and not being afraid to question things that maybe you weren't allowed to question before. that's like that's like the biggest I think the biggest thing that's led to my success, and like even if this channel failed, the reason I think I could build another channel and be successful is just being obsessively curious and obsessively questioning everything. 03:02:48.35 Spencer and Finding ways to answer questions It's just you can you just learn a ton you learn fast and you're not afraid to like You're not afraid to test stuff because you're like, okay Like my entire career isn't writing on this video this this video is just answering a specific question that I have about how my viewers are behaving and if the data looks like this it means this if the data looks like this it means that like I You know, that's the best way I can articulate that, I think, but being curious and just building forward. 03:03:21.62 Spencer Like, like some of the guys you've had on for your podcast here, like I did a little bit of background check on you. Some of the guys are like super successful. 03:03:29.66 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 03:03:30.17 Spencer Like I, like you, you had, um, you had Dr. 03:03:30.96 iandawsonmackay Well, it still blows me away. 03:03:32.77 Spencer John Deloney. 03:03:34.10 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 03:03:34.41 Spencer You had, um I mean, you had Forrest Galante on, like people who I look up to like, oh man, that's that's that dude is successful. And so there's times where I'm like, like you're just talking to me, I'm like, oh, i'm I'm not anywhere near as successful as some of these people. But like, you know, I think where my perspective helps, especially the your listeners, it's like, you know, i'm I've done some things. like i have Like I have a play button on my wall right there. One of my most prized possessions right there, but it's like, 03:04:04.87 Spencer I haven't made it to the point where I'm like fully, you know, I don't have my own like nice house yet. I don't, you know, I'm not debt free. I'm not like making six figures or anything, but it's like I'm on the way and I see the vision. And I think, you know, someone who's in that middle section, I think it it is helpful for people to hear. This is, this is how, this is how to like approach going from, okay, I've done a little bit of the the journey. Here's how to actually look at and and strategize the the next legs of the journey. um But I think like absolutely, like you know there's there's zero reason. um i like Podcasting is hard. Podcasting is very hard, but there's zero reason why if you can boil down your target audience and just really, really nail the psychology, there's there's no reason why you can't be successful. 03:04:59.86 iandawsonmackay Thank you. I love that. I mean, I love that you've leaked into it because I always get amazed when people say yes. To me, it's just like I'm just a random guy and it's I can remember having discussions and people were saying, oh, that's one of the best interviews I had. Or you asked me questions. I never got a chance to speak about these sorts of things. And I love finding that person. And it could be somebody with a million, 15 million but subscribers. Or it could be somebody with 8,000. And if it's something just clicks about the person, and that's when I've seen you, it's just like, yeah, he gets this. 03:05:32.91 iandawsonmackay Even though it's not usually my normal cup of tea to watch like ah you know insects and spiders and stuff, two minutes in I was subscribing. And I know straight away I need to get you on the podcast if that happens. 03:05:43.96 iandawsonmackay And it's like you're saying about the videos. It's like, if you do one and it doesn't work, you learn. If you do something and it's really great, great, you learn. You smile, you go do the next video. 03:05:55.47 Spencer Mm-hmm Yep 03:05:55.72 iandawsonmackay And it's that part, it's that kind of the journey, it's not the destination, as Aerosmith beautifully put it. And I think that's where you're doing so well. 03:06:06.43 iandawsonmackay you know year You're changing lives, but you're educating people. You're encouraging. You're making a smile on people's faces. You're helping people get through dark days you know like they're COVID and all these kind of nightmares. 03:06:20.27 iandawsonmackay But you're also changing the lives of animals. And you should be superbly proud of the work you're doing. And you're just starting. I mean, I'd love to have you on again and do another couple in different areas. 03:06:31.00 Spencer I'll be happy to. 03:06:32.24 iandawsonmackay and i think It's i one of, it felt like 10 minutes and i come it's been three hours. 03:06:36.60 Spencer Yeah, three hours. 03:06:36.74 iandawsonmackay yeah I would love to do another one and i I'm always wary about using a time of people, but there's so much we could still go into and look. 03:06:47.12 iandawsonmackay You could do a course just on content creation alone and people would buy it. 03:06:47.53 Spencer Yep. 03:06:51.05 Spencer i have I have thought about that. i actually I was offered a job last September um working for vidIQ. I don't know if vidIQ or not. 03:07:01.66 iandawsonmackay Oh, yeah. I use their, um, extension. 03:07:03.08 Spencer um yeah they 03:07:05.29 iandawsonmackay like 03:07:06.67 Spencer e they They offered me a job to be a strategist for them. because i actually I hired them to do consulting for me. I was like, hey, I just need some help with this, this, and this. and i needed a I like getting a ah fresh set of eyes to look at my stuff when I'm like trying to work on things and and build new series or new strategies. I'm like, is this working? Am I just totally off? like and and I was showing one of their strategists like my data setup. 03:07:32.33 Spencer And he's like, do you want a job? And I'm like, I mean, so I talked to them. I was like, I'd consider it. And they gave me a formal offer. They were going to have me on. But then I realized the workload was going to be quite a bit because they have a ton of demand right now. 03:07:45.93 iandawsonmackay No. 03:07:46.76 Spencer And I'm like, if I can't get an editor on time. I won't be able to work for you because i like the focus is the channel. like The focus is this. like I have to do this first. um So I ended up i ended up resciing we sendingnd my um or re sin like turning down the decline English Spencer, declining the job offer because um I just wasn't able to find an editor on time. That's where I learned how hard it was going to be to replace myself as an editor. And it's something I'm still struggling to fix. But, um, I mean, I, I, I live, breathe and eat YouTube strategy almost as much as I do wildlife. Like. 03:08:29.87 Spencer in my little cohort of wildlife creators, I am the strategist. Like I i literally have research reports. I have 20 page, multiple 20 page research reports that I release to them every year in a discord of like, here are my findings on YouTube this year. 03:08:45.27 Spencer Here is what's working. 03:08:45.78 iandawsonmackay Mm. 03:08:46.23 Spencer Here is what's not working. Here is hard data to support this. Like this year, for example, my biggest lessons were, you know, is consistency actually effective? And the answer is yes and no. Consistency of value, consistency of ah concepts, like like what what is the video doing for viewers? But consistency of posting, I don't actually have data to support that that's as good as it used to be. And so like I personally, am like I'm just going to draw back my upload schedule because like I'm wasting energy. I'm burning my wheels. 03:09:22.63 Spencer And if anything, I'm churning viewers. If I'm posting you know too often, and if I'm posting lower quality things to maintain that schedule, viewers will be like, well, this isn't that good. 03:09:35.89 Spencer So I'm just not going to watch next week. But if I'm posting twice a month, and they're like phenomenal, it's better. 03:09:38.82 iandawsonmackay Yep. 03:09:41.73 Spencer And so, you know, I everything I do, I just I'm, I'm i'm taking notes, I'm collecting data. And I just every at the end of every year, I just publish it like in in my wildlife group that I talked to. 03:09:52.47 iandawsonmackay I would love to see that because I think it was it was it. 03:09:54.88 Spencer I get 03:09:55.64 iandawsonmackay I think it was Pat Flynn, he was saying smart passive income but about how people were saying to him, we can see one of your videos is rushed, you know, like you're trying to poop too much out. 03:10:07.77 iandawsonmackay We'd look, we'd refer it if you just dialed the buck. We're happy to wait to get that. 03:10:10.79 Spencer Mm-hmm 03:10:12.36 iandawsonmackay And I love that you can see these observations. I mean, I would pay for that, that kind of report. And you're giving it away for free. 03:10:18.67 Spencer I could Yeah, I could I think is for me. It's like it's like I could pay wallet, but it's also like I am I YouTube the opportunity of YouTube has changed my life so much it's like to me it just feels right to give back to help other people to do it and If that makes sense, like I would consider building a course, but I don't have the right audience to sell it to. 03:10:37.65 iandawsonmackay No. 03:10:42.61 Spencer So it's like, it wouldn't even be, it would make sense to make a course right now. I have considered launching a second channel, teaching YouTube growth. I actually did launch it, um, years and years ago. 03:10:53.40 Spencer Um, cause I was teaching video editing first. Um, but like, yes, I can be like 40 subscribers, but, um, 03:11:00.38 iandawsonmackay let's 03:11:02.33 Spencer It's like, I, I've considered like going back to that channel and like running that on the side and teaching what I've learned and why I've learned it. And, um, the idea does come up once in a while, but the thing is I'm just, I'm just really, it's like I said earlier, like I have a passion for teaching people things when I learn how to do stuff and. 03:11:13.43 iandawsonmackay Okay. 03:11:21.93 Spencer I learned how to get, I got good at YouTube and I learned how to do it. And I can pretty much replicate a lot of the stuff that I'm doing. So it's exciting to me. And I want to share that with people who I know it would help. And so like within my wildlife communities when I'm collaborating, you know, I might not be the most talented presenter. I might not be the most talented snake hunter or spider hunter in my group. Like some people can find stuff a lot better than I can. 03:11:47.42 Spencer But it's like it works because what I bring to the table is I can help them you know iron out their concepts. I can help them you know direct their content strategy so that they can actually have results too and continue to go on trips. you know For some of them, I'm like, I literally, for Australia, I'm hiring Jack. I'm paying to bring him down to Australia because the the contacts we're working with are all his contacts. He has all the venomous snake handling experience that I don't have. 03:12:17.34 Spencer He is so much better at a lot of the things that I need to be good at in Australia that I'm like dude I'm just gonna pay your way in Australia to make sure that I can get the best videos possible and Not only are you being paid but you also can get your own videos out of it So I sweeten the deal for him to make sure that he wins. I win everybody wins and um with again With with content strategy, it's the same thing like I'd be happy to like email you it might be a little bit like Wildlife focused the one that I have from last year, but I could I could email you at the end of this the YouTube report from from last year if you want 03:12:52.40 iandawsonmackay That'd be amazing, because a lot of people say to you, why don't you just hire an editor? That'll free up your time. Why don't you hire such and such, and you're like, every social media like buffer to put out social media posts, $200, $300 a year, every AI creator thing that that would do all these videos, snippets, and all that for us, it's going to be about another $200, $300. Hosting your website, your domain, it all costs money. And people are just like, 03:13:20.11 iandawsonmackay Oh, but it's only going to, what, 30 pound for an editor? And you're like, really? You know, for a 15 minute site, you know? 03:13:25.60 Spencer i have i have tried I have tried outsourcing editing three times now, and all three, the their edits never made it into a final product on a video. 03:13:27.44 iandawsonmackay It should. 03:13:41.77 Spencer Not because they weren't talented editors, but it was like, I found that number one, I am 03:13:41.83 iandawsonmackay Hmm. 03:13:48.13 Spencer I need to work on my ability to communicate what I need from an editor in a video. And because my editing process is so asynchronous and so intuitive, it's hard for me to even boil down what I need from them. 03:13:58.88 iandawsonmackay to put it into words, yeah. 03:14:02.14 Spencer So it's like hard for me to even make their job easy. And then I've also realized that I'm very fast at editing. I'm very, very fast. So one of my 15 minute videos might take me four hours to edit. 03:14:17.31 Spencer And it's like, that sounds like a lot of time, but it's like when I send this to an editor, I had an editor. And she was a very talented storyteller, a very talented visual, like probably a better visual storyteller than I am, but it took her nine hours to edit a segment that took me 90 minutes. 03:14:35.54 Spencer And it's like, it's like the quality, the quality was good, but I'm like, I'm not gonna pay somebody hourly to do something in nine hours, it takes me 90 minutes to do. 03:14:36.59 iandawsonmackay a good discrepancy, yeah. 03:14:45.77 Spencer Even if it means I don't have to do that thing, it's like, I am gonna just hemorrhage cash hiring editor to replicate what I can do when I can just do it myself for free. And it's like, that's not the greatest mentality I know, but like I'm still working on finding somebody who understands my content well enough that They can, because like the the the hardest parts that I've been able to communicate is like, when do I, like for an intro, I have the music start before the voiceover starts. But it's like, how do I time that? How do I find the timing for that? And it's like, it's not like a hard cut. It's like, I'm listening to, I'm listening to the music and I can actually hear, okay, this is where that it sounds natural. 03:15:30.54 Spencer for the voiceover to start, but that's subjective. That's my personal taste. An editor might not have that taste or like they might not have the best way I can describe it is you can, if you're drawing something, right, you can trace an image perfectly and it'll, it'll come across as the image. Like you'll be able to tell what they were trying to do. But if that person doesn't not understand form, like a 3d, the 3d form they're trying to draw, 03:15:58.26 Spencer they're going to miss subtleties in the line weight and stuff that communicate form. And so that image is going to feel flat. You'll be able to see what it was, but it's going to be flat. 03:16:08.58 iandawsonmackay Now. 03:16:08.91 Spencer And so like, you know, as like when I'm like trying to train somebody to edit, it's like, You know, the shot choice, the shot choice for B-roll when I'm presenting an animal or something, it's like they might have the they might have a correct shot, but it's like there's ah there's something that feels off to me because they don't appreciate the animals the same way I do. So they're when they're selecting shots, there there isn't this level of intuition of like, oh, that shot's gonna be so cool right here. 03:16:39.42 Spencer But I don't know what the science behind that intuition is, so I don't know how to communicate it to someone when I'm training them that can rep that can like turn into results. So it's like, for the most part, I haven't been able to outsource. I might be able to outsource writing or research or something, but even then, it's like all those things are just so fundamental to what I do. It's hard to like extract them fully, and that's where it gets like messy. So it's one of those things that I have to kind of It's one of those things I have to keep executing imperfectly at and feeling forward until I get it. 03:17:12.70 Spencer And once I get it, it'll be a lot easier, but for now it's still a challenge and I still haven't solved it. So we're working on it. 03:17:18.45 iandawsonmackay I love that. I love that thinking that saying to sort of fall forward. And I think that's the thing. It's people, if you don't understand the culture, if you don't understand the the end goal or the the wish behind it, sometimes it's easier doing it yourself. And you've got to balance that cost to time versus the end product. And a lot of times Too many people buy all these products and all these support services and all that well before they need it. And it's they lose that authenticity, that kind of thing that makes you successful. I mean, I used VidIQ and all these other companies to kind of do it. And I actually found I got lower view rates sometimes on the SEO approved titles, so they were suggesting, because I was actually taking out the thing that drew my weird audience to my weird self. 03:18:07.32 iandawsonmackay And by removing your weirdness, you lose yourself in your videos. And I probably could think of a better way of putting that. But you know i mean it's like the people that attracted to you and your style of videos, but putting other people in sometimes, you actually remove that that attracted them in the first place. And it's it's a difficult kind of balance to get to write. 03:18:30.23 iandawsonmackay so i could I could spend ah thousands of pounds on on you helping me build my channel. like you You could do such a great job. But what would you want people listening to take from this? Before we can do a round two and get into the deep dives in each of the areas, different kinds, go about the Australia trip and things like that, what would you want people to take from this as a kind of a message? It could be anything and anything we've covered today. 03:18:58.92 Spencer Uh, just be curious is the biggest thing. Like all of the, whether it's the wildlife stuff, whether it's the the YouTube business stuff, like the the biggest, the the magic button that has helped me through all the things, just being really, really curious, even figuring out target audience, right? That's what I call the magic button to YouTube success. Like all of it just. 03:19:20.86 Spencer ask questions in your life, ask questions about yourself, get to know yourself really well, um and just be curious about everything around you. and the world just gets bigger. 03:19:32.15 Spencer I mean, when I say at the end of every video, I end every video with, don't forget to get outside and find your own adventure. And what I mean by that is just be curious. Just like an adventure doesn't have to be doing what I do and going out and wrangling rattlesnakes. 03:19:45.81 Spencer Like an adventure is just going out answering, like asking questions about your surroundings and learning something new. 03:19:51.48 iandawsonmackay No. 03:19:51.74 Spencer That that is that is the That is the like purest form of what an adventure is because you just your life gets more interesting. Your life gets more open and just gets bigger when you see things and approach it with curiosity. and so whether you are interested in learning more about wildlife, conservation, YouTube, or even something that we didn't discuss at all in this podcast. Let's say you want to learn more about trumpets. I don't know. It's just random. But anything you want to learn about, anything that you are curious about, just lean into that curiosity and it will take you places you couldn't even imagine. 03:20:28.33 iandawsonmackay that's why when you said curiosity a few times I've looked off to the right because I've got a whiteboard up there and I interviewed Reuben Rogers, a beautiful artist and he creates all these kind of like, he usually takes love as a kind of main message but creates different kind of murals and kind of like expressive art around concepts of things and one of them is about love and I said to him, well, that's your one word, because that's what he talked about, was creating content and helping improve the world through love, changing the world through love. And I said to him, well, what word would you say from me? And he said, curiosity. You always seem to have a deep, genuine curiosity in people. And I was like, whoa. And when you say curiosity again, that kind of just hit home again of like, there is definitely something in that about 03:21:20.54 iandawsonmackay finding that thing that we're passionate in life and you will find your 10, 20, 30, 40, a million people army who want to follow that as well who are interested in that. 03:21:32.61 iandawsonmackay And there's so many people who could be great who are just sitting just now going, eh, but, but, but, and I think hating your story will have inspired so many people to finally take that chance and fall forward and just keep trying and keep pushing and keep going. 03:21:37.51 Spencer Mmhmm. Yeah. 03:21:48.92 iandawsonmackay And I think that's a beautiful message and your videos are amazing. But even if it's something to have a cup of tea with, to watch while you're on your lunch break or to change your understanding about the world, conservation or 03:21:53.56 Spencer I appreciate it. 03:22:02.73 iandawsonmackay handling something or understanding an animal that, being to your kids, aren't afraid of animals. just you know you You're helping so many people. How can we follow along on this journey? How can we follow you on social media? how can we you know poop I think you mentioned a Discord that you were going to create. How can we follow along with the next evolution of your brand? 03:22:26.66 Spencer So, uh, I'm all again. um So I'm actually currently terrible at social media. I have an Instagram that I rarely ever use. I have a TikTok that I've posted to once, um but primarily my YouTube channel is My Wild Backyard over over on YouTube. 03:22:38.85 iandawsonmackay Mm. 03:22:44.77 Spencer And um I'll probably make another community post with the Discord link. I definitely have in my community tab, there are posts that have links to my Discord. um The Discord's great, lots of people hang out there, um lots of really deep. 03:22:58.59 Spencer uh philosophical and I mean all kinds of interesting there's just' interesting people in there so like we have all kinds of cool conversations and I post lots of like sneak peeks and stuff to like what animals I'm searching for what um what creatures I'm finding, what areas I'm exploring, all those kinds of things I post all in there. So if you want to follow the journey, Discord is the best place to get real time updates. If you want to see the ah the full story of everything and like have it play out on screen, the YouTube channel is the place to go. 03:23:30.06 iandawsonmackay code. Well, I'll head