The Past, Present & Future Of SpeakerFlow

Speaker A: You know those moments when you're doing what you love in your business? Maybe it's standing on stage or creating content. Whatever it is, you're totally immersed and time just seems to slip by.

Speaker B: This is called the flow state at Speaker Flow. We're obsessed with how to get you there more often each week, we're joined by a new expert where we share stories, strategies, and systems to help craft a business you love. Welcome to Technically Speaking. Welcome to the final episode of season three of Technically Speaking. We're so excited that you're here for us. Today's a little bit of a different episode than usual.

Speaker A: Sure is.

Speaker B: You're about to get the most raw, authentic version of Austin and Taylor that you've had yet. What we realized is that as part of this, you know, wrap up of season three, we want to reflect on the lessons that we've learned over the last few years and also give you a sense of where things are going since this is a change. So that's what we're here to do.

Speaker A: And as a side note here, if, uh, you have children in the car, if you're listening to this on, um, speaker or something, uh, just know this episode is stronger with language than many of our other episodes. We weren't lying when we said authentic. So enjoy, and we'll see you on the other side. It's so weird getting into a recording because, like, I feel like prior to a recording, we're just ourselves just talking about nothing.

Speaker B: Be something else.

Speaker A: And then you turn the button on, and it's like your. My brain just blanks out and makes me feel like I gotta put on a face or something.

Speaker B: It feels like you have to make a point. And I think that's what's hard, is, like, you have to. It feels like you have to force a thought rather than just let the thought happen. And you and I are also people. We've talked about this before, that are perfectly okay with, like, silence while we're trying to think about something. But it feels like there can't be just, like, space for thought or. You know what I mean? Like, I'm never gonna just, like, stop and, like, consider what you just said for a while. I feel like I have to just, like, have something ready to say back.

Speaker A: The most boring podcast on the planet.

Speaker B: Pauses of 3 minutes M. Long silence while we're pondering something.

Speaker A: No one would listen, though. Like, I'm so right.

Speaker B: That's how conversations happen.

Speaker A: Uh, that's how conversations happen. I'm sick of the Persona.

Speaker B: Yep. Authenticity matters.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, like, we own that pretty well. You know, the Austin and Taylor people get in person and in meetings is pretty consistent. But I don't know, I feel like the podcast has always been, like, one area where I just can't let go of the Persona for some reason. And, yep, I'm killing that person.

Speaker B: So, yeah, like, whatever it even is, I'm not even sure to. I don't know how to put maybe

Speaker A: quality to some degree, you know, like, or maybe we feel like you have to behave in a certain way. That's usually what it is, right. I mean, humans are. I think we're wired to want to fit into a community in some way or be accepted in a certain way. And I don't know, there's just kind of, like, unspoken standards. It feels like sometimes about, like, being a podcast host and you want to mold to those, like, having the perfect segue and the intro and the voice and like, all of this nonsense that is just not my personality.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: For me personally, it's probably because I want to, like, I care about it being successful, the show and the things we're doing and having good conversations with people, but for some reason, that feels tied to the Persona that comes with being, like, hosting a show, and I don't think it needs to be.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. I think for me, it feels more like it. I'm. I. I'm forcing it than anything else. I still feel more or less myself, but I feel like I don't give myself the space to, like, have my authentic thoughts. I. I feel forced to have thoughts.

Speaker A: And like, yeah, uh, that's draining.

Speaker B: It's weird because I'm perfectly comfortable with not knowing all the answers in so many other areas of life, but it feels like when you're recording a show, you have, you, like, you should have more information than sometimes I feel like I have. And so I feel like I need to have an opinion about something that I'm not qualified to even have an opinion about.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like, uh, yeah, every time we are talk to somebody that, like, is talking about storytelling and how to put together a proper presentation, I'm like, oh, yeah, that perfectly makes sense. Because that X, Y and Z, I have no clue. Like, I. I'm not qualified. Like, even. Even if I've, like, observed a pattern, it's. I'm still not qualified to weigh in at all. But I feel like I have to because I'm, like, running this show, you know, it's. That's weird. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, I guess it's the difference of being the expert and being the facilitator. Yeah. It feels like you always have to build on stuff, though, is the problem. Like a typical podcast, uh, situation. Like, somebody says something and then you have to put your insight in to Slayer on top of it. And now, let's be honest, sometimes guests. Holy crap. Just.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Dry as a bone.

Speaker B: Like, true. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. You combine, like, lack of being qualified with having to pull stuff out of somebody. Like, it's not always easy.

Speaker B: There's also something to be said about you and I choosing to, like, cover a broad range of topics with this show where, like.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't even know if that was a choice. It feels like it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we definitely got outside of, like, what is our core skill set, which to some degree is fine because we're learning something, but we should, like, recognize the fact that intentional. It should be intentional. It should be because you and I are trying to learn something, not because we're trying to try to be experts in something we're not. So.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I don't think we necessarily are. Like, that's probably too strong of a word. But I feel like I feel pressured to be, even if. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, I feel like, to the. To the point of, like, the content of technically speaking, so far, it's been great. We've learned a lot, had amazing guests. Thank you to all of you who have come on the show, if you're listening. But it feels like every other podcast in the thought leadership space.

Speaker B: Yeah, it does.

Speaker A: It's an interview about God only knows what. Depending on who we can fill the slot in that week for recording and what order they showed up in. And that's the stuff we run with. But it doesn't feel purposeful. Yeah, it feels like kind of like a. Yeah. I don't know. It feels almost separate entirely from speaker flow. It doesn't feel like it adds any, like, value to the vision of what speaker flow is.

Speaker B: You know, it's thought leadership and credibility. So that's something. It's not nothing.

Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's not about the thing that we help people with, though.

Speaker A: That's not the thing. Yeah, I care about. Like, it's cool that people listening to the show, like, they're like, oh, we love the show. Thank you so much. And then, you know, they become customers because they trust us more. Like, all those things are cool, but it's not like, I don't know, man. I'm not motivated by that. Like, it's very, uh, extrinsic, you know, like. Yeah, I want it to make sense. I want everything we do to be so purely focused that it's impossible not to understand what speaker flow is and does laser beam.

Speaker B: Shit, dude.

Speaker A: Laser beam. Yeah. And it just feels like we've got a little bit of a broken laser beam at the moment. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're like, we're like a 12 volt battery flashlight right now. So

Speaker A: we were.

Speaker B: Yeah, the focus is good. Some people listening to this, like, what

Speaker A: do you mean flashlight? I have a phone.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's. Yep. Yeah. Does the new generation even know that there's a thing that exists that you can buy that's separate than your phone's flashlight? Yeah, that's the right question.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, I was talking to Lila last night and she brought up something about an iPad. And I was like, did you know that we didn't even have iPads when I was a kid? And her response to that was what?

Speaker A: What?

Speaker B: Yeah. No. No iPads, no concept. She has no. No box for a world without technology.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: I think about what that's going to be like for her, you know, like I am, ah, very interested in how adopt. It's going to make our lives easier. Uh, digital adoption will be done.

Speaker B: That's true.

Speaker A: That's crazy to think about. I was reflecting on that because of the Steam decks recently. So for those of you that don't know in the background, Austin and I are big gamers. We spend way too many hours playing games together. It's awesome. Actually, we'll be playing tonight, so, uh, forward to that.

Speaker B: Any, any Diablo players on here.

Speaker A: We'll open up.

Speaker B: We'll start a clan.

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll start a clan. That's right. Clan. Actually not a bad idea. So. Not a bad idea.

Speaker B: We'll put a pin in that.

Speaker A: Yeah. All right, hit us up. But we just got Steam decks, you know, which are like basically PCs, right? Like what is it? Like a 8 inch, 9 inch screen in the center of two controller ends, basically. And they play all of the games, like all the games you can play on the PlayStation, the Xbox, your PC. Like everything. It is absolutely mind blowing. And I remember growing up like one Christmas, the only thing I wanted it was brand new. I mean, and it was very strategic. I think they launched this in October or November.

Speaker B: The Game Boy advance sp. Dude, the square one flips up.

Speaker A: Uh, no, that was before that one. It was the.

Speaker B: Oh, you're talking about like the, the rectangle.

Speaker A: Yeah, dude, I'm an og like the old Nintendo's I had.

Speaker B: Yeah, dude.

Speaker A: Oh, wow. Black Game Boy. I got the black lit one. I had all the collections growing up.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: Yeah, lots of Pokemon. All the things. But the Game Boy advance, it was the first, like. It was the one that was like, uh. What's the shape? I don't know. Almost sound like a trapezoid. Almost like a flattened octagon. Like if you imagine a stop sign and squish the top half down a bit. Right. Like, different design, fully backlit. Like, had a bigger battery, Played all these cool new games. Side note, my, uh, parents, they, like, gave me this big box for Christmas. It was my, like, only present. And I was like, this isn't a Game Boy because it was a giant box. But they did nested boxes and duct tape and all this stuff. I get to the bottom and the Game Boy advance box is there, but it's empty.

Speaker B: That's brutal, dude. They take you through the whole.

Speaker A: Wait.

Speaker B: They.

Speaker A: Wait. They went. They made me go through the entire emotional roller coaster. 15 minutes, go. Buying to hand me the Game Boys. So, anyway, all that to say it's mind blowing, the difference between that little thing and what we have accessible today.

Speaker B: And, um, technology has improved dramatically. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh. Ls growing up like that. That's pretty cool.

Speaker B: Yep. If anybody wonders why Taylor ever has a hot temper, you just learned the reason why. Uh. Oh, man.

Speaker A: It's probably a little too true. Yeah. That's hilarious.

Speaker B: Yep. Yep.

Speaker A: Well, all that to say things change. It's kind of a theme for, you know, today's conversation, I feel like.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. When we were, uh, talking about this yesterday, thinking about, like, the lessons that we've learned running speaker flow, I actually, when I was, uh, like, getting ready for bed and stuff last night, I was thinking about this, and what's weird is that we've never actually shifted the problem that we're solving with speaker flow. No, we haven't. We've only ever changed the mode of delivery. And, like, not to toot our horn and say that we have some magic sauce that other people don't or something, because this is available to anybody. And maybe this isn't actually some secret formula that works for everyone, but it certainly worked for us. But the whole point of thought leadership, really, is that you're trying to solve a very specific problem, and it shouldn't matter what mechanism you use to solve that. In fact, what you should do is do it the best that you can and then pay attention and then Laser focus on the thing that works really well. This is why we killed the coaching program that we had, because while technically it was a, uh, vehicle to solve the problem, wasn't the best vehicle to solve the problem that we could find. So we adapted, and one of the ongoing gripes we've had about the quote unquote speaking industry, and you could extend this to any of the other mediums, the coaching industry, the consulting industry, whatever, is. It's just like one very specific mode of delivery to try to solve a bigger problem.

Speaker A: And it's limiting.

Speaker B: It's very limiting. Yeah. I guess it depends on what your goals are, right? If somebody just wants to be a keynote speaker, just wants to stand up on stages and do their thing, and that's the thing that they're most passionate about, there's nothing wrong with saying, I'm just going to do that. But I don't think that's typical. I think most people, most of the people that would be listening to this show have an expertise in something, can solve a problem somehow and just want to be able to solve that problem for the clients and grow an awesome business along the way, obviously. But, yeah, getting too laser focused on one specific mechanism for solving a problem can sometimes get in the way of what would otherwise be a better way, or even maybe just a more differentiated way to solve the problem. And that sometimes can be the thing that makes the difference, right?

Speaker A: Well, at least in the beginning, Right. Like, if you're uncertain of what the best delivery is, that's when we should really be playing around, like we did in the early days, you know, what's actually going to work. But staying focused on the problem. I forget who told us this. Maybe, uh, this was a podcast episode. Maybe I heard it from somebody. I didn't think of this by myself. I don't think so. But it's actually come a lot up. A lot. I think I've had like two demos this week where this came up, but it's not so much about what you're offering. Like, if you're solely a speaker, cool. Solely a coach, cool. Solely a consultant, awesome. But don't label yourself as only that because it becomes commoditized. That's the problem I have with this, is like, you solve a problem, you're an expert in something, right? Saying I'm just a speaker, or I'm a speaker, I'm a coach, I'm a consultant, doesn't differentiate you in conversation with people. Whereas if you say, I help these types of people solve this problem, so they can see this outcome. The next question is how? And you know, then. Then break down the program. Right. But I think, I think it's just the mindset alone of just saying, like, I'm only this. And commoditizing yourself is the mistake that gets made. And where I was going this with this, this. I think it's a. An analogy. Yeah. But it's like, um, Coca Cola, for example. M. Put, put in your favorite soda brand. But Coca Cola, when I just said Coca Cola, you could practically taste. Taste it, right? You see the red, the white, Maybe Santa Claus, tis a season. Like you can. You have all these associations to Coca Cola, but functionally you taste it. They're known for that thing. Even though they have a billion different ways of delivering in 12 ounce bottles, 2 liters, 55 gallon drums, a bajillion different flavors. Like the way they're delivering that service is mini. But they're still known for that one thing.

Speaker B: Same candy bar, different rapper.

Speaker A: Yeah, same candy bar, different rapper. I love that phrase. Where'd that one go to?

Speaker B: That's a good one. I don't remember. Probably Brad Farris.

Speaker A: Might have been Brad.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. Our business coach.

Speaker B: Yeah. For those of you that don't know Brad Farris at Anchor Advisors in Chicago, he's a business coach. He's been our business coach since the beginning. Any single person that's influenced the trajectory of speaker flow, he's probably the number one person, like outside of you and I, obviously. But.

Speaker A: Yeah, right, the person.

Speaker B: Yep. Good. Good guy. The importance of having somebody that you can trust, that you can rely on is critical. Actually. It's really. It's the trusted advisor label of all my favorite labels. I like the trusted advisor label. And that's because an advisor advises on a specific. Specific thing is the thing that can differentiate you. And as an advisor, you have lots of different available options as to how you do your advising. So.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's.

Speaker B: That's a good one. But he's been our advisor and man, he's worth it.

Speaker A: So good.

Speaker B: I don't know how I could do. We call him business dad. In fact, the other day Taylor and I were having a conversation and we were just reflecting on how awesome Brad is, and he goes, uh, he goes, thank you, Dad. I mean, Brad. I still think about that every day. Yeah, that's good. Good. Yeah, it was good. Yeah.

Speaker A: It's crazy, like, to think back on, like, to your point, right. Since day one, we've been solving the same problem. It's just how we've Been delivering it. Right. Like, and we started this whole thing because systems were lacking. Like, we. No one was using systems, or they were extremely frustrated by them or, you know, um, they were just underutilized. And, like, we found, like, this is the whole foundation to a business. Like, if we don't have an assembly line to the whole thing, it's impossible to scale it. And the vast majority of folks in this space want to scale it, or at least bring on team and all those things. So that's been the problem since day one. Solving that problem, though, and figuring that out along the way, like, it's a blue ocean for us, you guys. Like, it was. It's been hard to figure out what the hell we do here.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Like, if we. If we build a timeline here. So we launched the business. It was May 2019.

Speaker B: Well, technically, it was, like, April. We closed our first deal, uh, in April of 19. And I remember this vividly, uh, because that money sat in stripe and we couldn't touch it.

Speaker A: Yeah. What was funny, too, is, like, we started it with what, like, negative. A few grand or something? Like, yeah. We just pulled in some money to, like. And it was just. It wasn't even a bank account. It was like, all right, I'll get the llc. You get the blah, blah, blah. Like, it was just this. Yeah. Thing. It's really scrappy. And I remember I still have that sheet of paper where we came up with the idea. Like, you guys, the idea for Speaker Flow was born off of, like, an existential crisis. And I don't even know how many countless hours of conversation between Austin and I, but eventually the conversation led to, like, what the hell do we want to do with our lives? Like, everything hasn't, like, so far, we haven't really found what we were passionate about doing or who we were passionate about helping. And after this long series of conversations, we realized the thing we were passionate about is this. And then the whole idea for Speaker Flow came up, uh, largely because I was kind of deep in trying to understand the flow state for a while, and I thought, like, there is this commonality, which is still true. Uh, I freaking love our brand and how we position this whole thing. But I remember I still have that, like, piece of paper stashed away somewhere on one of these bookshelves that have all the original logos and the ideas and thoughts behind it. And. And I think that was, like, March. Ish. End of March. And then, like, we decided and just started taking action. Like, we just started reaching out on LinkedIn, and then basically saying, like, hey, does this sound remotely interesting? And like, the uptick was really quick. And that's why we had to get the business actually formed in May of 2019.

Speaker B: But we're our first client.

Speaker A: Our first client, Aaron. Yeah.

Speaker B: And actually who got us our second and third client too.

Speaker A: And second, third, shout out to David Raymond.

Speaker B: David.

Speaker A: Yeah, Jacob Green, I think was in that mix too.

Speaker B: Yep. Yeah.

Speaker A: What's up, Jacob?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: So, yeah, but the thing is, is, like, we knew the problem was there, but we had no clue, like, how do we help people solve this problem? And I mean, we had some ideas there. We had some ideas.

Speaker B: The six week program, it was a six or a 12 week program. Six or 12, yes. Uh, and the entire thing was basically just like an Excel sheet that was like, here's all the major categories of tech that you can in your business, and here's the one that we recommend and why. And here's like the page to go. Sign up for it.

Speaker A: You're welcome.

Speaker B: Well, look, here's the thing, though. Like, one of the things that I believe is true about business in general by way of lived experience through running speaker flow with this intentionality, is that being people first always wins. If you're relationship oriented, it always wins. Like, even if we had a terrible process for trying to solve this problem with version 1 and version 2 and version 3, version 4, however many it's taken, it gets us to this point. But, like, you know, you just actually care about the person. Like, you just take the time to like, have conversations and just like, empathize and really understand where they're at. And like, that's something that's, uh, not a skill set that you really have to even develop. Like, anybody can do that at any time. Just, like, genuinely care. And it makes all the difference in the world. It can make an even otherwise not valuable offer substantially more valuable.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, because I just care about the people.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, that's what matters.

Speaker A: Well, and I think like, two, like, it's not like we were like, okay, we're setting up, like, even you guys listening. Like, it's not like we were like, okay, I want to get on stage. You can compare yourself to millions of people on earth who do that. And like, how do they do that? Where do they speak? Like, don't, uh, even get me down the rabbit hole of like, I don't know where to find leads because, oh, Jesus, you don't know how good you have it. You don't. Like, you. You had an offer, you have a problem to Solve you had a way of doing it. Like for us there was nothing to compare to. Like it's not like we were setting up a roofing business or a website development company where like people have a problem having business systems for some reason. Like, and it didn't seem like anyone else, especially niche oriented, solved the problems except on the enterprise level. And all the enterprise level implementation stuff is like we're going to set up Salesforce for and that is it. Like, but the problem was that like there's no operating system, nothing talks with one another. You have to be an automation genius. Like how do you even get a grip on all this stuff? And we knew what the problem was, but figuring out like how to like structure the company in a way that would give us the best mode of delivery was yeah, just a journey of trial and error. So many labels. It helped us figure out what we're really good at and what we're not and, and kept us open minded to different things. Like we started with the consulting thing and what's funny is, you know, functionally these days we spend about 12 weeks with people, 90 days to get all their systems set up. But I think in the early days, right, it's like these are the systems we recommend. Go get them and let us know if you have questions. That eventually came up a little bit.

Speaker B: Expecting people to be able to just learn how to use the tech itself like that, that was yep our. One of the best decisions we ever made was just deciding that we would develop the processes and systems internally to be able to do the implementation in house. As soon as we made that decision, things got substantially easier for us. Well, okay, maybe not easier. Things got clearer. Like how we can actually turn this into a scalable thing got a lot clearer.

Speaker A: And that wasn't. That didn't take us very long to sort out. It was, but we got interrupted I think with the pandemic. Like if I recall it was late 2019 or so. We're like, okay, we're going to set these different tools up that we know well. But we kind of had to use everything depending on the person's budget and what they needed. Like we had to use a lot of different business systems and we were like, okay, we're going to do the implementation for you and guide you through it. But it was still really rocky because like we were always reinventing the wheel depending on the tools people chose. Eventually we started to figure out like how this stuff should be structured and so like again, reinventing the wheel, like and then we'd still like need to be like geniuses on every piece of business tech on earth. And it's like, how in the hell do you train a team to master every system, period? And then why don't. And we have to do it from ground zero every time. Like not scalable whatsoever. And uh, then the pandemic came.

Speaker B: Dude, I'll never forget, it was at the NSA Thrive event and it was

Speaker A: like a week after shut down.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. It was while we were there that the news story started coming out of this. I'll never forget Brittany Hodak. Brittany, if you're listening to this, what's up? Brittany came over to us and was like, hey, are you guys seeing this? Like, I'm gonna have to like, like cancel some events or I forget exactly how the conversation went. But I was like, wow, this is crazy. And me being very skeptical at the time, I was like, okay, well everybody's freaking out and this thing's gonna pass. Boy, was I wrong about that prediction. Holy crap. How about just like shift and, and change the course of humanity as a whole? Who could have ever guessed that was how that was gonna play out? Holy crap.

Speaker A: Right? Well, and then. Yeah. Yeah. And that was like six months in and we, I. We weren't like even paying our. Like maybe we were getting some portion like some money at the time. I'm pretty sure, like we were still side hustling to some degree. Like I remember being poor. Yeah, like poor, dirt poor. Like nothing.

Speaker B: Yeah. Every dollar we made instantly invested.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was. Yeah. Tough. And then covet hit. And I remember, man, like it was, it was probably a week or two though, after we got back from m. That conference and my phone just started ringing with all of our clients in the consulting end of our business being like firing us. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, of course you can't say no. Like no business like entirely.

Speaker B: And yeah, we had one client that lost $300,000 of $400,000 she had on the books in like a week straight.

Speaker A: Yeah. It was so hard. And I know many of you listening like, you're in, you're in. Yeah. But it was still difficult. Right? Because now, like, if anything was going to kill us, it was going to be this, you know. And so how do we adapt our offer in a way that doesn't cost thousands of dollars but can still help right now when there's downtime and some reinvention possible and group coaching came into.

Speaker B: That's the answer. That's it. You stop doing it one on one. You start doing it in group, cheaper for the client, SC leverage delivery. And that was actually, it was more or less a success. It was good. We built some of the most solid relationships we've built in the entire business because of that program that really, it contextualized how like the training element of our business needs to fit in. And it taught us that we can do it in a more scalable way via coursework, which meant that we could be more impactful.

Speaker A: I think an important lesson here though is like I, I didn't know what I was signing up for. Group coaching, right? That label has implications to it. Like we're uh, yeah, we're not, like I'm not qualified to be a coach, right. And what we found is like it's training more than anything, right?

Speaker B: That's the thing, that's what people.

Speaker A: But we didn't have the right labels. And so what happened is, uh, you know, bring on a client and their expectations of what was possible were completely out of line with what we could actually deliver. And there were also some just unreasonable expectations people had like, oh, with your magical advice and me doing nothing, I'm going to make millions of dollars or whatever. Like that's just not how it works. But at the end of the day it was our fault because we had the wrong label for the thing that we wanted to be doing. And granted, we were still actually figuring out like what is it that, what is the delivery mechanisms that that's best for speaker flow. And I think the mix of that and the label isn't wrong and, or was wrong that you know, combined thing. But then of course we realized like with this stuff, we don't need to charge for this stuff. Like we can produce courses that teach you all of it. We can do monthly meetings with all of our users and things to, you know, give them access to it or you know, uh, other ideas we can create. Like process oriented courses. Like I think from day one our goal has always been to give it away. Like all of you listening have been to our resources page on the website. Like we don't hold anything back. Like go take it and run with it and if you can do something with it, awesome. But if you want somebody to implement it, that's where we come into the mix. And I felt like when we made that decision, like I felt free. I felt this sense of relief, like, wow, we can really just, just do, implement the system, build systems for people. And at this point, of course we had, you know, Zoho in the mix and the operating system getting built and like we could only do that and become. Try and become the best at it and give everything else away for free. And then. Yeah, that felt so much more like. Yeah. Intrinsically motivating.

Speaker B: Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker A: Holy.

Speaker B: There's something to be said about, uh, well, this is the Alex Hormozi thing. Give away the solution, sell the implementation. Like, we just. It's value first. That's the thing is like, look, you can just have all the things like we. We have to do. I have to pay staff people to do work. So, like, I can't. We can't do work for people for free. But if you want to, like, learn the solution and like, go and do yourself, freaking more power to you. Go for it. And like that. That's an empowering thing. It's like, it. The entire thing is based off of empowerment. You're either empowering people to go do it by themselves, or if that's a bad use of their time or money or whatever, and they can outsource it to us and we'll do it for them. But, uh, the whole thing is just based off of value creation. Nothing is ever held back. And like, this is one of the things that's fascinating about other coaching organizations in this space. And not everybody's like this. Like, one of the people that I love that I think is like the model in the opposite of what I'm about to say is David Newman, who is not afraid to just like, here's the things that work. So shout out to you, David, thank you for running an awesome coaching company. But there's so many people that just dangle the carrot.

Speaker A: It.

Speaker B: These are the problems we can solve, but you gotta pay me before you can get them. Um, and like, there's no guarantee there. And like, this is why I'll never forget, actually when we first started speakerflow, we started getting involved in the communities and the National Speakers association.

Speaker A: And.

Speaker B: And people told us they're like, you're gonna, uh, be fighting an uphill battle because there have been snake oil salesmen in this industry for as long as it's existed, and people are highly skeptical of it. And looking back now, I can see why that's the case. Because think of how many coaching practices we pop up in the last four years where there's somebody saying they've got some magical answer that's going to get somebody booked 50 times a year, and then it never pans out and the whole thing falls apart and the reputation is destroyed and people right back where they started and more frustrated.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's rough, man. That's, uh. Yeah, so. And that thought's been in the back of our head since day one is like, okay, how. How can we be completely in alignment with what we're telling people we can accomplish and not, uh. And this is why for those of you that have been listening that have been on this journey with us since day one, this is why we pivot. I hate that word, but that's why we pivot the way that we do. Because when we find that we're out of alignment with that core belief system that we have, we had to change something, change it. So, yeah. What's hilarious about the situation with group coaching though, is we realized the model was not that effective for the thing that our clients actually needed. And we felt kind of gross, feeling like we were keeping things behind closed doors. But then like not. We, we didn't learn the lesson about focus at that point because what we did was we went. You went full implementation and I went one on one coaching. And for the next year, that's how it was. We did more or less what we're doing now. And I did accelerator and that was because I think.

Speaker A: Well, here's what's interesting though is at this moment in time too, we also had some other rings in the fire, right? Like we had this like uh, the intel engine branded under Sam Richter, which is an amazing tool. Sam, what's up? We had like, I uh, think we were maybe in conversations with Espeakers to build Gig os, which was a branded version of speaker flow but was really just an integration between the two. We, we started seeing the world open up a bit more and people to have more budget. And so we realized maybe we can go back to the one on one stuff. But we didn't know what that was going to look like. So the accelerator program came out, which was more like glory. I mean in a weird way it's almost like Flow Zone is today. But regardless, a lot more hand holding, one on one or Flow Zone plus a lot more one on one stuff. And it still had the coaching element. And then we were still trying to figure out how the implementation stuff was going. And what was interesting is since the. I mean, I remember. And this should have told us everything. We ran one webinar when we first started working on Speaker Flow system. Shout out to Julie Holmes for helping us connect the dots with Zoho1 in the early days. But we ran a webinar and we had. And it was cheap. It was so cheap we just gave away the CRM and said all right, see you later. Like no functional support, Nothing. It was like 497. We made like 30 sales from one webinar. Are like of uh, a system. Right. It's like something that was built for them. And then the implementation kept building and building and building. Yet we were still looking for these other ways. Like it was right in front of us. In hindsight the whole time people were just begging for all these, begging for it all these other ways. And I don't really know. I don't. I. It's just not relevant until it's relevant I guess. But you kind of. We're curious people. We want to rule everything out and figure it out out. So we had all these irons in the fire at this moment in time and this was probably what 21ish. Now we're talking where we had the accelerator, the implementation was, was going the intel engine gig OS that uh, cruised

Speaker B: all the way until October of 21

Speaker A: different courses we partnered up with people on to try and sell. Like we confused the out of the market for a while because some people had one experience with speaker flow and other people were getting this entire different experience. And you know people knew us as like the lead gen tool even though it was powered from Sam Richter and some of um, you know like there was just no consistency and it was

Speaker B: such a pain in the ass to manage on the back end. Like uh, yeah, it was rough dude. This was the stage in business where we were prioritizing speaker flow growing and our clients needs over literally everything else including my health. Right around this time I was sick and not sleeping and I had gained like 80 pounds. Like uh, that was a rough time. That was a rough time. We were trying so hard. Like yeah, it was. Yep. But yeah, like I think, I think one of the big lessons that I learned from this, that entire experience is the importance of like listening to your intuition. Like the entire time I knew something was weird but I just felt like I needed to continue pushing the rope. And like you know you were talking about a book that your mother in law gave you recently. I think about the importance of knowing when to quit. And, and damn, that's, that's a tough lesson. But that is an important lesson. And one of the other things that's hard about this too, right. Is that it's not that like this confusion was causing speaker flow to struggle like it was in hindsight. But we've grown four years in a row. We've never not grown year over year and not grown by A pretty substantial margin. So what we do was doing was working. And especially when it came time after we had, like, realized that we needed to focus and especially that we were going to just. Just drill everything down into one specific offer. I mean, we had, like, I. I mean, I. I guess I don't care. Throwing numbers around, 350, $450,000 a year worth of other things. Specifically coaching that we were ready to ax, that we were. Was gonna go well. It was like, look, we're gonna risk potentially halving our revenue in the next year to be able to be more focused. And I mean, that was a gamble. That was a gamble that paid off. But I mean, um, that's a point

Speaker A: where you're so sick, thin and not in your zone of genius doing the things you want to be doing for people. Like. Yeah. Ah, at some point, it's just. It, uh, doesn't matter what it takes to just call it. And we did. I remember, too. We got. We got hate. Like, so they would reach out. They'd be like, your business is going to fall apart. This is a terrible mistake. Screw, uh, all of you, by the way, and not your business. Uh, I will fight for it all day long. Do whatever the hell I want. You understand? So all that in mind, and then people. Yeah. And then I called all of our partners, and all of our partners were great. They were very gracious. Sam, Espeakers, thank you so much. We love you. Still recommend them all the time, and we still have our integration. But I remember having to have those hard conversations. I'd say, sam, we're not going to white label the thing anymore. It's causing too much confusion. E Speakers, guys, like, love you guys. We need to label this as our own integrations. Creating a separate brand isn't going to help either of us. Like, you know, and then we had to kill all of our accelerator coaching members. All of the group coaching stuff switched off overnight. And we. We didn't have a backup plan. Like, they were scheduling more meetings with people. We were like, all we're going to do is make the speaker flow system the best possible system to use that we can and make the implementation process done for you systems as flossy as humanly possible. And we killed literally everything else.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And it worked.

Speaker B: It worked. I. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: And look like, never been better. It's worked.

Speaker B: Oh. It was the best decision we could

Speaker A: have ever possibly made, but it allowed us to build an assembly line. Like, if you think about an assembly line, right. Like, it's. It's inputs equal the same product outcome every single time. Like for uh, a single car, for example, one assembly line for one car. Like it allowed us to finally build an assembly line. This is the thing we need to build. How are we going to make that happen? And then now we could really start to. And it's funny, you know, the, what's the cobbler's son's shoes story? You know, like we can finally systemize speaker flow. Yep.

Speaker B: And, and that did not happen overnight either. Uh, even for us being systems people, it took us, I mean it really took us until the end of last year. Basically. It's like really define that process. That's when we decided to create our implementation planner. Anybody that's gone through our process over the last year has had a Google Doc that we use to map out the whole process and get really into the weeds so we can understand how things work.

Speaker A: All the project back end, the hiring.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, the, yep. Ongoing training contextualized all of the other decisions that we had to make. I think that's actually maybe one of the main benefits that focus brings is that it allows. It's a filter. It's a filter that lets you make decisions more easily and uh, makes that process a lot easier. And that's honestly one of the worst parts of being a business owner is that you have to make the decisions that can sometimes have really positive or really negative consequences. And like anytime there's lots of variables have to consider when making those decisions. You can, you, you just, it's impossible to feel as confident landing on something. But when you're laser focused, there's not, there's just less variables. It's easier to land on something and then measure whether or not it's working.

Speaker A: M. You know how in life somebody says something to you and you're like, that makes sense, but you haven't lived it, you know, like, you don't know that experience. Like for example, one of those actually things that happened recently, we were talking with our business coach and you know, today, luckily because of our focus, Austin and I have never been closer to truly living in our zones of genius and speaker flow. Meaning we're building team underneath us and we're removing ourselves as bottlenecks. You all know we're the biggest bottlenecks in our company.

Speaker B: We're sorry. We love you.

Speaker A: Uh, we're doing our best. Brad, our business coach, he's like, once that happens and you are, you're, you're no longer the bottlenecks in these areas, your business will grow. Naturally, simply because you're not the bottleneck. And he said that. And that makes sense. I have yet to experience, though, and I'm a little even skeptical, like, are you sure? You know, like, are you. I might have to do more sales, which is going to keep me as a bottleneck. I don't know. So, anyway, I'm waiting to live that out. One of those experiences that happened kind of during this process is kind of the phrase that, like, one. And a lot of focus experts, they talk about this, but once you choose something to focus on on, you realize how deep you can really go. And until you make the decision to get focused, you'll never be able to see how deep you can really go, which means it's like you're jumping into the deep end and you have no idea how deep that stuff can go. I mean, you're not even sure if it can go deep. And so that's. There's fear. And I think that's why for a lot of people who are also doing many things in their business, it's hard to make the decision to say, I'm only going to solve this problem. Like, for a speaker, I have all these different topics. If I choose one, then what if there's not enough market? Like, all these fears come up. And I remember when we finally got to our breaking point and we were like, okay, you know what? Yeah, we're going to now only focus on implementation, everything else.

Speaker B: And we accept the consequences of that decision.

Speaker A: I mean, it was almost overnight. I probably put it in about a month after we settled into only doing that thing. And the world of opportunity of how we could improve it, like, opened up. It was, Yeah. A crazy experience.

Speaker B: It's one that we're still figuring out where the bottom is.

Speaker A: Yeah, there's no. There's nothing. Yeah, there's no. There's no, uh, end to how deep you can go on one specific thing and how polished you can make it and how incredible of an experience you can make it. And been, I think, like, that opened up for me personally, probably wasn't until the end of last year. It's been about a year when we made the decision to kill it all.

Speaker B: Yep. And what's crazy is how much faster you can make progress once you've made that switch. Because the thing about going deep in a space is that not only do you become the best at it, or at least a contender for the best at it it. And it gets easier to differentiate in the rest of it, but your reputation like this is one of the things that we talk about when people bring up, like, like, ideal client profile, like, who should I go target for for leads? It's like, be as specific as you humanly can be. Like, every parameter you can possibly think of, be that specific. Because if it works, and it doesn't always work, but if it works, then your ability to develop a reputation as an expert in that space grows dramatically. Because people talk, talk like you're, you're now taking advantage of human nature, the connection factor of human nature. And that's another thing that I think is, like, counterintuitive to what you expect is that you feel like the more specific you are, the more limited the opportunity is. But in reality, if you're spread too thin, you never even have the opportunity to be able to grow. It requires specificity to be able to develop that, that reputation. I can't think of a better word for it besides reputation. But once you do, like, here's the thing, do some Googling about the world's foremost expert on systems for thought leadership businesses. You're going to find one company. That's it. And it's because we're so unbelievably specific, and any business owner can be that specific. It requires a lot of work at trial and error. Once again, it's taken us four years, really, to get to the point of this level of clarity. But, I mean, we went from. Yeah, we've grown a lot in the last year, both in terms of revenue and team size and our capacity for being able to deliver work. And every single thing has improved since that decision was made. It was sweeping improvements.

Speaker A: And we've talked about this a lot this week. We haven't mentioned it in the podcast yet, but when we are so spread thin, you have to say no to a lot of things that you don't want to say no to. You know, like for us, you know, it's. It's little things, like somebody's having an urgent issue with their system for some reason. We'd never had the bandwidth to, uh, for a team member to pick up the phone and say, hey, how can we solve the problem? Like, there's all these moments where we want to say yes to things. We know we can improve the client experience, but you're so spread thin trying to deliver all these different things and work on all the stuff and run the business at the same time, and. And we can finally start saying yes to things. And we've also had a lot of these conversations, but in the last year, it's really felt like okay, I'm going to back up. As a human being, there are only certain things that you enjoy doing, right? There's skills assessments and Persona assessments that'll tell you everything you need to know about yourself. But all of those personality traits mean you are really good at, ah, a specific set of things. When you're running a business, you have to do all of the things for a while, and that is incredibly draining. And as, I don't know, hard working as Austin and I are, we are not the best at certain things. Most things, yeah, uh, most things. Things also, when you're spread thin, you don't have time to, like, you m. Have to drop balls, I guess, is my point. And you have to make decisions about what you're willing to do, even though it's not best for the overall experience, simply because you're limited right now. So as you get more focused and as we've grown, I've realized that, like, what I personally prefer doing can live separately from what speaker flow can do. You know what I mean? Like, even though, like, I'm, uh, I'll be honest with you guys, some of you have already picked up on this. I'm not the best at support and making our right. Like, I. And I, to be honest, I don't like it. It's not the thing I'm good at. But I care so deeply that you all get the best experience possible from speaker flow, not from me. And so I think, like, as you continue to like the thing, I'm starting to realize this is again, been only over the last year, but as we've gotten more focused, like, what I personally prefer doing and what speaker flow can do are two different things. And that's opened up the, like, the realm of possibility of how I'm, um, objectively removed from the equation of making those decisions. And it's going to be better.

Speaker B: It speaks to that. Like, your business ultimately is a container for you to be able to do the thing that you love doing. And what that requires is for you to set up systems, meaning people, technology, and process that handle the parts of the business that are not the thing that you like doing. And like every. This is not groundbreaking news. Like, this is just what, like, delegation running a business is. Like, this is the least original thought anybody's ever had. But, like, it's so true and it's so hard to really picture until you start building the business. But for all the people that, uh, have questioned whether or not it's possible to like, delegate the things that you don't Love doing. I want you to think about something for a minute here. Okay? Taylor and I, in order for Speaker Flow to exist and offer the service that we do, we have to be thorough experts of this industry, the thought leadership industry, this type of business model. We have to be extremely familiar with Zoho, the operating system that we implement, and we have to be pretty dang familiar, familiar with the rest of the, like, technology components that feed into different website platforms and all the other tools that we migrate from. And that is a gigantic amount of information. That's an entire career's worth of information from two of us that have allowed that to be possible. And so since day one, the conversation you and I have had is like, how is it even remotely possible that we build a business this, that isn't dependent on Austin and Taylor's brains being involved in order for this thing to work? And, uh, it wasn't until very recently that we realized that that is the case. And for us personally, what we realized is that we just have to chunk that down into enough specific components to hire specific people to do specific things and then have a process that ties it together well enough to make that possible. But we took something that has no other business model that I can think of that we could look at as an example for how to do that. This. That is an unbelievably specific niche skill set. And we've been able to delegate it to people that have absolutely no experience in either one of those things. In fact, I think our entire team right now is entirely built of people that have not done this work before. Ground zero, to be able to do ground zero. And so whatever abstract thing in your business that you feel like you're stuck doing forever because nobody else can do it but you, you. It's a lie that you tell yourself, and you absolutely can do it. But you have to be focused enough about what it is that you want to deliver, and you have to be clear enough about what it is that you actually like doing for that to ever even be possible to begin with. And that's a call to action. Figure out what those two things are. Figure out what it is that you do better than anybody else and what it is that you like doing better than anybody else. And figure out the mechanism that you can use to. To get that outcome for people better than anybody else. And the rest becomes logistics. And it requires attention and observation and measurement and dedication and focus and grinding and doing the stuff that you don't want to do to the best of your ability. For as Long as it takes to do that. And it requires pushing even when it looks like there's no end in sight. And it requires the creative thinking and it requires the discipline thinking. And like none of this stuff is easy, but it is 100% possible. Possible. I know it from a lived experience. I'm an idiot. For those of you that don't know, Austin didn't even graduate high school. I'm somebody that ran away from home at 16. I like on paper I should be the lead. I should be in a cardboard box, truly. But you can do it. You can do it. It is 100 possible. And those self limiting beliefs I think get in the way of a lot of people being able to spend more time doing the things that they love. And actually ah, at the broader level, level, the world suffers because of that. Is that you as a thought leader, as an ability who can solve problems and make people's lives better, hinder your ability to do that at the maximum level that you can because you're stuck doing things that you don't want to do. And once again to iterate the way that you get out of that is systems.

Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker B: Thank you for coming. My TED Talk.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker B: So I think one of the things that we wanted to talk about in this episode is like where, where we're going from here. We're almost an hour into this show. Show. Let's wrap it up with that. Look, here's the reality of this, this episode. It's the finale of technically speaking. We're taking a break from the podcast for a little while. It may be a permanent, indefinite break from the podcast. We might shift our focus and do something else next. I have no idea. But it feels like if this is going to be at a minimum a temporary goodbye from this show, uh, we owe it to the people to let them know what the plans are.

Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt. And I think if we go back to like the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that technically speaking, it's been fun, it's been cool to have guests and learn from people, but it's out of alignment with what Speak youe Flow is today. If we make the decision, that's what we want. Awesome. That's cool. And you know, we'll keep doing it. But, uh, the future, as far as this show goes, it's going to end where it's at with this episode. If we decide to spin up another podcast is going to be in the lens of what we do at speaker flow. But there's also Opportunities for us to reach you in different formats, particularly things like, you know, more video content and putting our efforts there. We just want to make sure that the content that we're delivering to our folks is in complete alignment with how we implement at Speaker Flow. Give away the solution, sell the implementation. We want to make sure that all of our content that we give away for free is actually helping you solve the solutions we set out to. And so we're going to take a pause and we expect, you know, a decent turnaround on, um, spinning stuff up. But it's going to happen sometime in 24, and it's going to be a format that creates a lot more value, I think, than what we've done so far.

Speaker B: Yep. I don't even know if I would say a lot more value, because what we've done so far has been valuable, but it's going to be more in alignment with what Speaker Flow is about. About, and I think because of that, it's more valuable.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally.

Speaker B: We have some cool stuff cooking, you guys. We're not taking a break here because we just need to figure out what content looks like. Some of this, too, is that, like, we just have some really huge priorities for the next year. We have version two of our CRM coming out. The biggest update that we've ever had through seven iterations without calling it the next gen of CRM. This is the next gen of CRM. That's a pretty lofty statement coming from us. Coursework. Yes, coursework is coming. One of the things that I've been really excited about for a long time now that we just have not had the space to be able to do. And you know what, some of our effort that has gone into podcast recording up until this point may be partially redirected into this, but creating courses that are not just about the technology component to systems, but about the process and people components of systems. Uh, it just so happens that Taylor and I are really good at recruiting people and teaching people how to build teams and delegate is something that we definitely can do and is in perfect alignment with the overall ethos of Speaker Flow and the process side of this. Like you guys, all of the lessons that we learned and advice that we gave while we were doing coaching and it was a lot, uh, we're not, uh, we're not anything magical here, but we got the reps in enough times that we really know what works and what doesn't. At this point, we've already just given that information away for free on our resources library and inside of Speaker Flow universe, but being able to create dedicated courses that show people, here's how you generate leads, here's how you fulfill in a standardized way, here's how you tackle finances so that it's not intimidating. I have no idea. But there are so many lessons that we've learned by way of running Speaker Flow and by working with our clients that I would love to be able to just give away the same way that we just give away the rest of our content.

Speaker A: And that's right.

Speaker B: These are some big things that are coming next year.

Speaker A: Well, and the thing I really want to communicate, Kate, is we're putting the pedal to the metal as it relates to growing the team. Austin's, like, core mission here is to remove ourselves from the weeds. We have to, like, we've been close to it for a very long time and we've loved the relationships that we've built and the one on one work we got to do. But in order for us to hit any of the goals that Austin just mentioned and for us to continue making Speaker Flow as valuable as possible, we have to be out of the day to day day of the growth of the business and the operations of the business. We have to be the idea makers and continue to layer and level up Speaker Flow. And it's not like we have to wait entirely until we're in those seats before all that stuff happens. But my point is, we've never been more able to make that happen. And as soon as it does, it's going to allow us to make Speaker Flow like the best company to work with in this space, like, period. I'm so committed to making that outcome a reality. And so what that means to our point of focus earlier is, for now, we're going to take a break on this and make stuff happen and come back with a lot more value going forward, I think.

Speaker B: Cheers to that. For those of you that have been with us for three seasons and 150 episodes, thank you.

Speaker A: Thank you.

Speaker B: For our clients that are listening, thank you. It's because of you that we've been able to get to this point. And because we're able to level up and be able to create even more value, this is an overall extremely positive thing. And at the same time. Right. I acknowledge the fact that this is a change and something different. And so if nothing else, I hope. I hope our listeners know we love you and we're grateful for you. So thank you for helping Speaker Flow become what it is today. And we're excited for the next chapter.

Speaker A: Sam.