“Our Dad is a STAR!!”

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Mr. Beat, YouTube Star!

Matt Beat has created a thriving YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of followers and millions and millions of views.

Too bad his kids aren’t photosimpressed.

by Amber Yoshida

Matt Beat, boring dad.

There’s a great scene in one of Mr. Beat’s YouTube videos where he plans a day trip to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene. “Are you excited to go today?” Matt Beat asks expectedly as his young daughters are getting in the car.

Sheepishly, his older daughter Lydia asks where they are going. After Beat explains, she replies with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude.

“You always want to go to the history things,” she says.

“Yeah, they’re fun,” Beat says with the same tone all dads use when trying to convince their children to do something.

“No, they’re not,” she replies.

So it goes for Lawrence’s most popular YouTube star. He has more than 750,000 subscribers and more than 150 million views, but Matt still isn’t cool to his daughters.

“You know, that’s okay,” Beat says with a laugh. “I understand kids aren’t suppose to think their dad is cool. I mean, I make videos about history, so maybe it’s not very cool.”

Matt Beat’s channel, Mr. Beat, hosts the history videos he has been making since he was a middle school teacher. For more than a decade he’s been using the social media platform to make history more approachable, and digestible, for a wide audience. His deadpan delivery and self-effacing production has gained fans around the globe, a far cry from his beginning days.

“I was teaching middle school history and needed a way to engage the kids,” Beat explains. “I knew they loved online videos so I thought maybe I could make some lessons more interesting with a video.”

Beat applied the video editing skills he learned in college and honed them while making videos for his old band to produce educational videos that compliment his lesson plans. The first few videos went over well with his students, so he made some more. Then something interesting started to happen.

“I noticed the views on the videos started growing well beyond the kids in class,” Beat explains. “I realized other teachers were using them in their classes. That was pretty exciting—to think other people found the videos useful.”

Beat continued to produce videos series on presidential elections in American history, Supreme Court briefs, and comparing different topics, while also featuring songs about almost all the presidents. Though the income from ad revenue was a nice supplement to his teaching income, it wasn’t until 2020 when things really took a turn. As the world sat home during the pandemic, Mr. Beat kept producing videos. As revenue increased, something became clear.

“I realized I was making more from YouTube than from teaching,” Beat admits. “Shannon and I decided I could really do this and make it a full-time job.”

Shannon Beat, Matt’s wife, handles the business side of Mr. Beat—securing ads and handling media request—while Matt researches, records, and edits a video a week.

“I think people have the idea that it’s pretty easy for Matt to produce these videos,” Shannon Beat explains. “Maybe it’s because of how casual he is in the videos, but I know how hard he works on these. I can hear him sometimes when he’s recording and he’ll say the same line over and over until he gets it just how he wants it. It’s a lot more time consuming than many think. He works hard.”

Matt Beat explains that research for videos can be tedious (have you ever tried to research every president’s favorite drink?), but it’s a labor of love. He is, after all, a history nerd and loves to help others learn. The main goal of his growing YouTube reach isn’t financial.

“I want to help spread empathy,” Beat says. “That’s really it. I’ve made videos about some controversial topics and received some nasty hate mail and that is kind of astonishing. If I can help spread some knowledge I think that can go a long way to making people more empathetic. That can go a long way to making our communities better.”

While Matt and Shannon Beat are thrilled with the success of the Mr. Beat channel (Matt also has a great second channel, The Beat Goes On, which focuses on music), Matt does miss standing in front of a classroom full of students.

“Yes, I miss it from time to time,” Beat admits. “That’s why I love to stream, because it gives me an opportunity to interact with my viewers, who are often like students.”

Matt and Shannon Beat joke that he has become what most kids dream about these days: an online influencer. Their two daughters don’t see it the same way. While Lydia and Reegan have been in videos (see the video: Driving the Oregon Trail in a Tesla), Matt and Shannon don’t include them in most videos.

“They understand what Matt does and have been involved in some fun videos,” Shannon Beat explains. “But we don’t want them to be too involved. And, to be fair, they don’t really want to be in a video about a presidential election in the 1800s.”

As the Mr. Beat channel grows, it’s not uncommon for him to be recognized while around town with his family. Beat appreciates people supporting him, but his daughters are less amused.

“I do get recognized from time to time,” Beat says with a laugh. “My daughters aren’t that impressed.” LK

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