Jake: We were doing all outbound marketing and we completely stopped it. Like cold turkey stop, and we just do marketing through conferences, and that's when we started seeing the 3x growth. That's crazy.
Austin: Wait a minute. So you're saying it's the exclusive strategy now? Like that's the key thing.
Jake: Yes. The only marketing that we're doing is that.
Austin: I wanted to ask you, have you connected Claude to your CRM yet?
Jake: Yes. Actually, Zion just did it and he's so obsessed that he did it for me too.
Austin: Have you tried it yet? Do you have any use cases under your belt?
Jake: I just started. I'm using it to pull basically like a six month plan to get back in touch with all of the people we've worked with, so that I have an easy, easy task list every week to be like, "Hey, did you contact these three people to say what's up?" Cool. You're keeping the relationship alive.
Austin: So good. I love that. We did a similar thing too, and I learned when I was doing the tasks, letting it synthesize what had already happened in the relationship as much as possible, like with emails and with meeting transcriptions and stuff, I'd ask it for that feedback. Like, go mine everything that you have about this person so that when I reach out, I'm brought up to speed. And every time it surfaces a little detail, right? Something they mentioned in a meeting one time that I had completely forgotten about, where I'm like, yeah. So then in my hour you should be back, how is that vacation to Fiji, and it blows their mind every time, because you know what I mean?
Jake: That's incredible. I'm gonna use that now too. I'm gonna add that to the prompt.
Austin: Yeah, do that. I think anybody who's not playing with this technology yet is missing out. Because it drops the barrier of entry to doing anything in your systems. You know what I mean? That's always been the biggest problem, is just interfacing with the software sometimes can be so difficult. But when you can just be like, I suck at this, what can you do to help me? Because I don't even know what to ask you. And have it be like, well, here's some things that you should consider. That's just a wild situation that we're in.
Jake: Yeah, absolutely. It's even to think that it knows you can give it the structure of your team. Say like, this is my role, my job description. This is not mine. Because I was onboarding Z as sales, so I'm trying not to step on his toes. So like, what should my role be and how should I approach it? And it was like, yeah, you don't want to be selling. You just want to be popping in as a fan of theirs and they're a fan of yours. And you're just checking in. I hate that word, check in. I've learned to hate it. We're not checking in. We're catching up with them and keeping the relationship alive.
Austin: I think you just said the keyword there. It's so easy, especially when you get into a more systematic approach to doing business, it's easy to make people numbers or just a box that's being checked. But it's a relationship. That's the word that you said that made me think of that.
Austin: We can't ever lose that thread. And in fact, I think the deeper thing there actually is that all of the systems that we use, all the processes that we follow, all the tech that we use, the team and how we train and set expectations for the team, all of it is oriented around maximizing human connection, you know? And I think that's, we just released a state of the industry report, and one of the stats that we showed is that those that are using AI for operational things are earning $80,000 more in revenue on average than those that are using it primarily for content generation. But the vast majority of people are using it for content generation. And I think it ties back to this. The point isn't to push out more content, the point is to free up your time from all this admin junk so that you can spend more time on people, the relationships, you know? So, anyways, we're gonna see where that plays out. But isn't that wild?
Jake: Oh my gosh, that's wild.
Austin: For the listeners that haven't seen it yet, reach out to us, get the state of the industry report. It's awesome. It's fun.
Jake: Yeah. I love that y'all do that. I don't know how I'd ever get that data without you guys, so I appreciate that.
Austin: Yeah, and I don't know how we would get all the data without all of you beautiful humans that helped us get it. So thank you to everybody who participated.
Jake: Ooh, it's symbiotic.
Austin: It goes both ways. So the reason that we set this up today, outside of the content angle that we're gonna talk about, is that when I think about somebody who's doing this business especially well, you come to mind every time. And here's why. Because you do an amazing job of balancing the thought leadership, the expertise that you have, the people skills that you have, the content creation that you do, the visionary stuff. You balance the visionary stuff with running a proper business, and in all the regards as far as I'm concerned, on the client experience side, on the sales and marketing side, on the back office side, on the leadership side. You do both sides of that really well, which is an unusual thing in this space. And I'm not taking shots at our listeners, okay? But I think most people that do this type of business are hyper tuned to the visionary creative angle and really struggle with the business. It's the reason SpeakerFlow exists, because of that conundrum right there.
Austin: But you've always stood out to me as somebody who nails both sides of it well. So when I was thinking about who am I gonna have on the show, it's like, I want somebody who sets the bar of how to do this business right. And so you're that guy. So that's why we're here.
Jake: Thanks, Austin. That's really cool. I was reflecting, actually it was just this morning because we were doing the show, and one of my first team members, Chesca, I had the confidence to hire her because I was starting SpeakerFlow and she had experience with CRMs and all that stuff. And I think the confidence comes from when you wear your visionary hat and then you wear your maybe implementer hat when you don't have somebody else that's on your team, your confidence comes from your systems. And so it's cool to look back and be like, yeah, man, I built it all alongside you guys. You've seen me through the very beginning all the way till now. So it's pretty sweet.
Austin: Such a privilege. It's been such a privilege to work with you. And just for proper context, in terms of scale, how big is your team scaled to? How big is your team? You have five, four people?
Jake: We have four full-timers.
Austin: Including you? Okay.
Jake: Yes, I'm one of the four. And then we have five contracted team members and then a couple of just as-needed contractors.
Austin: So like nine people that you're working with regularly and then some independents as needed. That's what I just shared?
Jake: Yes.
Austin: From single person business to nine human beings putting some or all of their food on their table because of this thing that you built. So for all you listeners, okay, keep that in mind. This is not somebody who's just getting started here. You've experienced the whole curve, you know, which is so cool.
Austin: So when I'm preparing to bring somebody into the show, I force you, thank you for being a good sport, Jake, I force you to submit my little form that's like, what are some systems that you have found valuable or that you'd like to talk through with me?
Austin: And I mentioned this before we got on. I'm gonna repeat it for the listeners, but I was so thrilled to see what you put in there because it speaks to something based on a trend we saw in previous state of the industry reports that said that people that do this thing on average out earn those that don't by a huge multiplier, like one of the biggest multipliers we've ever seen. Next to being like a celebrity on social media or something, which is fascinating. And that thing is sponsoring events, like having a booth. Being a sponsor. In the same way that for those of you that know SpeakerFlow because of the National Speakers Association, we go and we put up a booth and we hang out and talk to people for a couple of days. That's what I mean by sponsoring events. And that looks like different flavors. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about what that looks like for you practically here. But going in as a sponsor to an event and not exclusively a speaker, or maybe completely independently of a speaker, is a really underutilized marketing vessel. And it's interesting because this is an event based business. So it's not like people aren't seeing sponsors out there, you know, but I think most people, including myself, really don't connect the dot of how effective that could be as a thought leader. So anyways, that's the impetus of all this.
Austin: And I'm curious, is it the results of that, or what is it about that thing that you've done that stood out as something that you feel is worth sharing?
Jake: Well, at the beginning I thought kinda like maybe you did or most people do, which is I never visit the booth anyway. So why would I even consider that? I just go to get a pen or a piece of candy or to win a T-shirt or something. But I don't remember ever buying anything. And then what I've seen now is the results from it, is three Xing my business every year for the past three years. And honestly, switching our marketing, where before we used to use our CRM to gauge outbound leads and we were doing all outbound marketing, and we completely stopped it. Like cold turkey stop, and we just do marketing through conferences, and that's when we started seeing the 3x growth. That's crazy.
Austin: Wait a minute. So you're saying it's the exclusive strategy now? Like that's the key thing, that I mean, of social media, and I'm sure there's other things you do maintenance-wise, thought leadership-wise. But as far as you actively going out to procure new clients, that's the thing that you're dumping, you're putting your eggs in that basket. Wow.
Jake: Yes. Besides, of course, referrals and repeat customers, because obviously if you're doing a good job, that stuff will happen and that'll be a big part of your business. But the only marketing that we're doing is that. In fact, I remember in the beginning, we were just spamming all these school principals and counselors and it feels terrible, right? You're like, man, I shouldn't be doing this, but our program is life saving. I gotta do it.
Jake: And you do it, you get a little bit of results, it kind of just gets the wheel turning. And you're asking yourself, when can I stop this? And the reality is I have friends in the industry who still only do outbound marketing. They can never stop because that's how their business is built. But going to conferences or hosting a conference so that you're in the hub of where your buyers live, I don't really see another option. Like if you wanted to stop outreach, I think that's it. That's what you have to do. You're building relationships somewhere or you're not.
Austin: So true. There's something about the physicality of it too that just makes it such a unique way of building those relationships. Being physically present with somebody is just radically different than an email ever possibly could be. There's just an energy exchange there that happens, you know? So I feel like there's tons of reasons why I think it's such an awesome thing. It's fascinating that that's the main thing that you've done and the reason for why you went that direction. Because I know so many people that have either done tons of outreach over the years with much less success than they actually want to. Or it's just a lot of work and they feel burned out by it. Or it's such an intimidating proposition that they just never even do it, but are constantly telling themselves that they should. And there's a guilt and shame spiral that can start because of that, you know? So it's a hot topic. Because what else do you do?
Austin: Right? That really is the question. If you want new clients, clearly posting a post on Instagram ain't gonna get you booked for $15,000 for a keynote or something. So that math don't math, you know. So what else do you do? I think the logical thing for most people is that. So I've two questions for you, a pseudo-question and a question. First of all, can you just give us a really short explainer of your expertise and the types of people that you serve? And then I'd be curious to learn about the impetus of this. What happened that triggered this idea to break away from doing outbound for conferencing instead.
Jake: Yeah. So to give you an overview, I'm the co-founder of Vive18 and we help young people have fun and feel good without using drugs and alcohol. So K-12 schools is our primary market. The organization, what it looks like today is a lot of speaking engagements. We also train professionals that are in the drug prevention space. We host our own events and conferences now, which we can talk more about how that came up, 'cause it is conferences, but we host them now. And then yeah, we have a toolkit and curriculum that people use, and people buy our courses and hire us as a consultant. So just basically think about niching down on your favorite thing. That's what we did. We want to empower young people to make smart choices, and so we live in that space. Thank you.
Austin: I was just a big supporter of your whole thing. So let's go, man. Changing the world.
Jake: I remember sending you the t-shirts. You're like, hey Jake, how do I represent Vive18?
Jake: And kind of the first moment when I realized we should be doing conferences, there's a guy named John Hunter at my church. And he is so generous, very successful sales leader running international sales. And I told him about what I did. He got really excited. And at that moment I was looking for a coach. And so we started meeting every week. And he walked me through this model of identifying who are your red light, yellow light, and green light clients. And my job should be to serve one client so well that they introduce me to my next clients. So it's like, all right, who's my favorite client? Cool, it's the Bilates from the Florida Keys. And it's not just 'cause they live in the Florida Keys, okay?
Austin: It might be an additional thing, but yeah.
Jake: Exactly. But they're like the most passionate people. They bring you in because they want to change lives, not because the school said they had to bring in a speaker. And so we got to help them start a drug-free club and help their students gain leadership skills and they want to do stuff year after year. I'm like, man, if we could have 10 of these clients, that'd be so cool. And so we just asked the question, where do you hang out? Like what's your professional conference? What things do you read if you do subscribe to things? And they said this conference that basically all these grant funded nonprofits show up twice a year to this conference and they said, Hey, why don't you come there and we're presenting this year? So if you make us a little video of how we work together, we'll put it in our presentation. And that was like a door.
Jake: I just showed up to the conference, to their venue, and I left with more leads than I had ever had before just by doing that, being in the room. I wasn't a sponsor yet or anything. So then it told me, hey, this is actually the room, and all these people are doing work like they're doing. And if you're listening to this and you're like, hey, what's my thing? You could just Google the conference in your industry, or you could ask your absolute favorite client. Where do you go and hang out through the year? Where do you meet people like you? And can I join you?
Austin: That's such a good strategy. Yes, right. Just get it from the horse's mouth. Talk to people. The relational approach is always gonna give you the best information. Always way above and beyond a gut check ever could.
Jake: Yeah. You try to guess it, ninety percent of the time it's wrong 'cause it's on my limited scope and honestly I'm not a good buyer. I'm not a good consumer. So when I think about what I would do, it's usually the opposite of the people I want to reach.
Austin: Sure. Self-awareness is a beautiful thing. Okay, so this sort of happened because of chance. And it started as you got proof of concept that these events, this conference setting, was really good for lots of relationship, volume relationships, which is just objectively the case. All those people in one place is the prime breeding ground. So at what point did you say, okay, well, instead of just pursuing this organization as a speaker, which is what I think most people would immediately start thinking, how did that turn into, well, let's sponsor it?
Jake: Well, once the conference was validated by going there and getting leads without sponsoring it, the question just became how do I meet more people at this conference? And I know that because when I meet someone, if they hear my elevator pitch and they're in the right field, they're gonna get interested and they're gonna wanna write down their email. That's the response.
Jake: And Austin, you know this, right? I started a business in college throwing giant parties without any drugs or alcohol. And it led to hundreds of students coming and getting national sponsors like Red Bull, Pizza Hut, Subway. And then students would request this at their school. Started speaking and throwing clubs. So they're like, Whoa, I've never heard anything like that. And it took me twenty seconds to turn a stranger into a lead. So I just need to repeat that over and over and then get them into my Zoho CRM. That is the number one thing to do at a conference. Give as many elevator pitches as possible and then get them into the CRM so we can nurture and have a discovery call. So yeah, I feel like it was so easy to make that decision. But I also had to be like, man, I'm not used to paying to go there. I'm used to getting paid to go there. So it is a moment to swallow my pride and show up in the room because they're the ones who can help me change more lives. And I do pay a lot of money, like it's thousands to sponsor it and you buy the flight and hotel and now bringing team members and stuff, but it's totally worth it.
Austin: Man, I think that's so good. I think actually that's probably where the hesitation lies for most people, right? And I think this industry in particular has this weird sort of thorn in its side where there's this whole subset of events that are happening that are pay-to-play where the point is to just position you as a speaker. It's not that you're actually there to create value or whatever. It's just that you get to be a speaker and that might be good for your demo video or whatever it may be, right? So I think a lot of people are instantly shying away at the thought of spending money to have presence somewhere. And I think you can even expand outside the speaking engagement thing. Think about all the PR people that are out there. I can get you published in Newsweek for six thousand dollars and in reality they submit a form on your behalf or whatever, you know. So anyways, this industry has the potential to be taken advantage of, I think, in a way that's even different than most. You have a thought there?
Jake: Yeah, I do because it's bringing to mind the part I went to a conference before and I didn't have success. And I was a speaker, I had built out my program, and you got 15 minutes of stage time. And so that should beat the elevator pitch, right? You get stage time instead of the 15 seconds. I was not successful though. You know, I actually left with one client. So it paid for itself, quote unquote, but I served them for a couple years, but that market was not tested for me. I thought that I would serve college students because that's where my story began. I didn't find traction until exploring the middle school and high school market and then realizing how funding works. So that is another thing, is you have to consider what do I want to get out of the conference? Am I just validating myself in a new market? And am I willing to pay to do that? Or have I found my market and every client is worth X amount of dollars? It would be silly for me not to go spend at least that much to go meet a bunch of these people. Only you can do that math, right?
Austin: Dude, yeah, this is what I mean about you doing such a great job of straddling the line between visionary and business owner stuff. Because that's some business owner stuff right there. It was justified. It was research. You did math to figure out whether or not you were actually gonna be able to get a return. This is stuff you have to pay attention to. And I actually think this is a good thing, right?
Austin: Because any underutilized marketing channel, let's say, can very easily be messaged and twisted to be some magic wand. Like, just spend 20 grand a year on five different conferences and put up your booth and you'll make 20 million. You know, so it's really easy to get your expectations super high for something that isn't deserving of that necessarily. And what you just touched on there is the thing that makes this not that, is that you don't just spend money on random conferences. There's a strategic angle and it speaks to the outcome. That actually might be the more important thing of what you just said. You're going there with a specific outcome in mind. And yeah, we want leads, obviously, but there's these conditions that sit underneath that. Or it's like, even if I can't guarantee there's leads, maybe it is a market that I have history with and that I think I could be a good fit for, and with a bunch of conversations, I could validate. So that's a totally different angle. Then I already know these are my people, and my job is just to talk to as many humans as possible to fill that funnel up, quote unquote. So yeah, the angle, the reason, the intentionality behind why you go and do it matters a lot. And then beyond that, the research to make sure that you're positioned well to be able to get it done.
Austin: I actually think it's not just a two-part process. There's a third thing that you mentioned as well, which is the CRM thing, which is just shorthand for follow-up, right? That's really what that means. The tool that you use to do it is arbitrary. If you'd prefer to carve it into rocks, do it with stone tablets. But way easier with software these days, you know? So you're probably gonna use a CRM. But what that practically translates to for you, I imagine, isn't just that they exist in a database, but it's probably that you send follow-up emails and maybe even pick up the phone and connect with them on LinkedIn. Right? It's a part of a bigger picture thing that's the beginning of the process that's unfolding. Is that fair?
Jake: Yeah, for sure. And Austin, we do, and I don't know if you remember helping us set this up, but you taught us how to use our email templates so that when someone does opt in, they get any free gifts that we offer them for stopping at the table. And we call it a gift basket. So it gives us three emails to say, Hey, we're gonna send you some stuff over these, and each one will have an invitation to schedule a discovery call, things like that. But apart from that, what's really nice is you can have a tag where you met this person. So next time you reach out, you're just in the CRM thinking, it's close to that conference again. Why don't I click that tag and send everyone an email saying, Hey, are you going to the conference again? Can't wait to see you. And so I don't know, marketing and sales just becomes a lot easier because you've been able to create tags and have templates and do all these automations that you used to not be able to do because it was too much, you know?
Austin: Yep, so true. My tech brain immediately goes a direction with this. So I wanna drop a way I think that you could do this the best. But I'd be curious before I share that, how do you get people practically from the conversation at the booth into all of those systems? What's the mechanism you use to do that?
Jake: Yeah. I'm gonna say this 'cause some people need to hear it. I hate business cards because you don't own the relationship then. So I pull out my phone or ask them to pull out their phone and then I type in vive18.com/intro, which is a page we made just with the Zoho form on it. They fill out the form and we ask them for their name, their state, email, phone, and then we have a checklist of things they might be interested in. So it's a long form actually, but they're super qualified leads and they love us after they meet us. So we kind of have permission to do it. And if we're doing a raffle, you don't get a raffle ticket until we see the form completed. And we won't talk to you again. We're not gonna ask you to fill out the form and then fill you with conversation. You're doing the form and then we can continue. So we connect it right to Zoho Forms, which then shoots it into the CRM and automates the email sequence that they're gonna be on. What are your tips?
Austin: I love that. Well, yeah, the interaction that you have there though is the thing, right? It's not just like I have a QR code sitting here, passively scan it and then I hope that you convert. It's like we're in the conversation, take my phone and do this right now. We're not waiting till later. You're doing it right here. I think that's good. I need to hear that sometimes too, actually, 'cause it's tempting to just assume the more passive thing will work, but it just doesn't. It just never does.
Jake: No, it's good to apply a little positive, I wouldn't even call it pressure, but positive awkwardness. 'Cause when you're sitting there and they're filling out the form and you're looking around and thinking, Should I fill this void? It's like, no. It's kinda like making a sale. Let them think about it. Let them say the next thing. You're making a small sale, right? From their information.
Austin: Yeah, the micro yes. It's a series of those that leads to the actual agreement being signed. Every interaction looks like it's incrementally moving it forward. You know, you don't have to go fast, you don't have to rush it, it takes the time that it takes, but you're always trying to move it a little bit further. I think one of the things that I love about your approach, and I'm biased because I'm pretty certain we built this whole flow for you, but when a form gets submitted, right, and you have automations and things attached to it, you can be really specific about what the next steps are. You can have them flow in with tasks created to process them properly. You could enroll them in a drip series. You could put them in other tools. You have a lot of granular stuff, but to set that up is a pretty technical venture. And this is another moment where I can mention AI. Here's a scenario. You build a project in Claude with instructions that say, I'm at this event for these days. Here's the people that I'm talking to, here's the outcome that I'm going for. And then every time you get handed a business card, you just take a picture of it and give it to Claude and let Claude do all the processing of that person and log everything into the system. You can even give it a voice note. It's like, here's kind of the context of what went on with it, too. But it's not quite as clean as a form. So I would say that's probably optimal. But Claude is getting closer to the next best thing in a lot of ways.
Austin: So I'm curious, on the process side of this, right? How does one go about this conversation? Is it just the one event that you sponsor that was just well qualified? Have you branched into others? I know you mentioned hosting your own events as well, which I want to talk to, but before we drift in that direction, specifically if you're gonna sponsor an event, how does that conversation unfold? Who do you talk to? What could somebody expect if they were gonna go in and start having these conversations?
Jake: Yeah. I mean, first, if you're at a conference, before you go to the marketing person, look up the team and see if there's someone you can just connect with as your subject matter expertise. Ask them how you could be helpful to their audience. And you could even say, I'm considering becoming a sponsor. I know I'm gonna talk to the marketing person, but I wanna chat with you first. How do you think I could best serve your audience? Here's what I do, here's what I understand about you. They're gonna give you a lot of the good information to help kind of validate the experience and if you should be spending your money there because they're not incentivized by the marketing budget. They just want to help their people. So you're some way to do that.
Jake: Then when you get past to the marketing person, that's when you really want to use your leverage to say, hey, this is what I do. You know, I was thinking I'm gonna buy a booth, but can you introduce me to someone on the content side? So get to know as many people within the organization as you can because what happened at our industry conference is not only are we having a booth, but we're leading workshops. We did become the keynote speaker. Those types of things will happen because you're getting to know the team and you're learning more about them and how you can help them. So yeah, again, back to what you said, Austin, it's relationships. It's really all about that.
Austin: That's a slam dunk, by the way. Just for all you listeners, that was genius. Never in a million years would I have expected that to be your response, but it's so good. That's some in the trenches wisdom right there.
Jake: Thank you. I think it's because I would inquire about speaking at, there was like a first year orientation for the college market. And they told me flat out this: I would love your money, but because we had that conversation beforehand, I say, I don't think you're gonna get the results that you want. Or our people aren't really primed to make that purchasing decision. So you're gonna get passed off to somebody else. And I knew right then the momentum would be lost. That'd be a waste of money. You need the buyer to be in the room. We have two major ones. The first one called CADCA is the one that's with our buyers and it's twice a year. And then we go to another one called NPN, which is almost like your buyer's bosses and they hold all the funding for the entire state, but they're still focused on the problem that you solve. So you're learning their language too, and that's really important because now when you're speaking to your client, you kind of understand their job better than they do. You understand their measurables and what they're gonna be judged by. And so you truly become an expert partner in that. And that's really fun for your clients. Like, yeah, I work with Jake every year because he understands me. Or, why would I change from Austin, because he literally knows my boss and he's gonna write my measurables for me and all these types of things that really matter and make their lives easier.
Austin: Man, it's so interesting to hear you talk about all of this too, because you didn't mention at all in this entire conversation how awesome you are when you're on stage. And now look, you're just a pretty humble guy. So I can't actually imagine you saying that about yourself. But even outside of that, it's not even about how good your product is. And I don't think what that says is that it's not a good product. I think it says that the assumption at this point is that what you do is already so great. But what you're talking about here are the details in the customer experience. And I love this topic of things that people focus on because it's not talent dependent. It's not about you being the best speaker ever. And that's not permission to have a crappy product. People need to be great speakers if that's what they're selling, obviously. But the way that you differentiate and the ways that you can incrementally get ahead of your competition or just your previous record, or whatever, is oftentimes in those little details that are just kind of looked over by most people.
Austin: Because nothing about what you said was magical. It was literally just talk to as many people as you possibly can and genuinely try to serve them and just put yourself out there in that situation. And then opportunities come that you can say yes to in an angle that you weren't expecting. But what it started with was a value-oriented, a service-oriented relationship. And being able to develop that with people is accessible to 100% of the people listening to this podcast. Everybody can improve their ability to do that. And that's the thing that made the difference for you. It's not just that yes, you can improve it, so you should. It's that it actually can be the thing that makes the biggest difference. It's a good aha, I think, people should have.
Jake: Austin, if I could offer some practical advice for people if they want to do this, it's that when you lead into the conversation with curiosity instead of a sale, people just open up to you. It's amazing. So yes, I've had conversations with directors of statewide initiatives and government agencies and not trying to make a sale. They were very open about what their budget is, what their priority is, what language, what dates I need to have on my calendar, because they need to spend their money by. And it's not so that they can put more money in my pocket. It's so that we can help their people better. And so if you're thinking, well, how do I get that person who seems too far out of my reach? Well, don't pitch them. Ask for 15 minutes of their time to share about them. Everybody loves talking about themselves. And then make it this informational interview so that you can again better learn to serve the people that they serve. I love how you made it very simple. You're just asking for these meetings or appointments or relationships. There's really nothing fancy about it. If you come from a posture of service and curiosity, that'll do all the work for you.
Austin: So true. You know, there's this, I say trope, probably that's not the right word for it, but when you're thinking about marketing and messaging, every branding expert on the planet will say that you've got to focus primarily on the problems that you're solving. Don't talk about features and benefits, think about the problems that you're solving. And there's this undercurrent with what you just described there, which is that ultimately what we're doing is helping solve problems. The reason you're in the room with those conversations is because you have valuable expertise that helps solve a legitimate problem that those people are actively trying to solve for. You know, and so that's kind of the equation in some ways. You have to be clear enough about the value that you have and the problems that you solve such that you can identify the people that probably are the best people to talk to as it relates to solving that problem for whatever the demographic is, and then intentionally develop the relationship with it. And with what you said, to add it as an angle there, is don't pitch them as a part of that process.
Austin: The angle is genuinely informational. I'm trying to learn more about how I can better serve with the talents and skills that I've developed in whatever area that it is. And once again, a universally applicable skill that is not based on you being an amazing speaker, it's based on heart posture, you know? And it says something in this hustle entrepreneurial culture thing that we find ourselves in as business owners, you know.
Jake: And the good news is if you become good at that, you will also become a great speaker. You can't mess it up. If you're curious and you care about them, you will become an amazing speaker. And that's the cool thing, is once those both things happen, your efforts just compound. If you're not great yet, you can do all this work, it'll help you get better faster, but you won't see the wild results yet. But once they start matching, then you'll see that hockey stick kind of thing happen and it becomes a wild ride.
