S. 2 Ep. 25 – Systems Aren’t What You Think They Are

Taylorr: Welcome to another episode of Technically Speaking, we’re your hosts, Taylorr and Austin, and in today’s episode, we have a little something special in store for you. Now, if you’ve been watching or listening to the podcast for some time now, you’ll know that we almost exclusively always have a guest come on the show to talk about their thought leadership business and their perspective on the world and how they’ve grown it and how they stumbled into this world that we all live in; just to have a casual conversation about what it’s like to grow a business in this space. 

And rarely do Austin and I do a show solo, if you watched our season one recap, where we kind of digested all of what happened in season one, you’ll know that was the first time we did an episode with just the two of us. And as of late, we’ve been getting a ton of requests about what’s the backstory of Austin and Taylorr and Speaker Flow, and why did this whole thing come to be, and what are your philosophies in business and why does Speaker Flow actually exist? And so, today we thought it would be fun after 80 episodes to talk about just that. You’ll learn about our backstories, how we met each other, you’ll learn about why we started Speaker Flow, and all the trials and tribulations that happened along the way. 

This is just a fun conversation to kind of reminisce and unpack how all of this came to be. So, as always, we hope you enjoy this episode; if you want more content like this specifically definitely reach out and let us know, otherwise you can definitely stay tuned for regularly scheduled programming next week with our next guest. As always stick around until the end for some awesome resources, and we hope you like this one. We made it, dude.

Austin: And we are live.

Taylorr: That’s what they say at least, is it really live if we’re recording it and then publishing it later, let us know in the comments, is that live?

Austin: I don’t know where the line in the sand actually is, you know?

Taylorr: Yeah, I don’t know either.

Austin: Yeah. I feel it really should be live if you’re doing it if you’re broadcasting.

Taylorr: If you’re broadcasting, yeah.

Austin: If you’re just recording, it should just be a recording. We are recording.

Taylorr: I suppose that’s why they call it LinkedIn Live and not LinkedIn yesterday.

Austin: That’s, yeah. Thank you, that’s helpful.

Taylorr: Well, solving big problems here at Speaker Flow. No, nothing short of that.

Austin: That’s very true. All right. Well, shall we get down to business? We’re here for a very exciting episode today, people. People, meaning all of you wonderful listeners, so thank you for being here as always. We have done how many episodes now, Taylorr?

Taylorr: Oh, man, I think, we’re in the high seventies now; Almost 80, I think total.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: Because this is episode 25 for season two, and I think we did 56 or something last season.

Austin: Yep. And it’s almost always you, me, and a guest.

Taylorr: Somebody else a guest, yeah, which is fun. It’s crazy how much we learn, I was really excited for the podcast because we get a bunch of content created, get some noise going, but, man, the amount we have learned in the last year and a half running this show, it is crazy.

Austin: Substantial. Yeah.

Taylorr: Substantial.

Austin: And we met the coolest people, man. So, so grateful to be in a position where we get to bring experts to the table, I’m constantly improving basically in every area of life.

Taylorr: For sure.

Austin: We also did the season recap.

Taylorr: That’s right.

Austin: That was 25 episodes, 24 episodes ago. So, that was the only other one that we’ve ever done just the two of us. But we’re back for a solo Austin and Taylorr adventure.

Taylorr: It’s going to be very exciting; I’m pumped.

Austin: Yeah. We figured we tell the story, because, man, we talk about so many…sometimes seemingly disconnected things on this show because we just bring in such a broad variety of different experts. But in reality, it all gets tied into a single thread, which is systems, just as the teaser for that I suppose but we figured we’d explain why, after 80 something episodes, explain why this show and why Speaker Flow really, just as a whole exists. So, that’s what we’re here to do, right, Taylorr?

Taylorr: You’d think it wouldn’t have taken us 80 episodes?

Austin: Yeah, I know.

Taylorr: Here we are. Honestly though, if we would’ve done this episode one, it would’ve been terrible.

Austin: It’s true.

Taylorr: I’m glad we have enough reps in for it to be 80, I feel it’s going to be much better, we’ll let you guys be the judge of that, but.

Austin: Yeah, definitely.

Taylorr: My 2 cents.

Austin: That’s true. Yep.

Taylorr: So, about how far back do we go, from the womb?

Austin: Yeah. Right. We have to start somewhere.

Taylorr: I was building CRMs in the womb. So, obviously.

Austin: That’s, yeah, I don’t think. Yeah, I don’t think so.

Taylorr: Yeah, no, I don’t either.

Austin: Good idea though. Maybe you were.

Taylorr: Fun fact, I didn’t even learn how to ride a bike until I was eight.

Austin: Yep. So, Taylorr’s under-qualified.

Taylorr: So, I definitely was not creating CRMs in the womb.

Austin: Thank you for specifying because I’m sure many of us were very, very curious about that.

Taylorr: Yeah, for sure, fun facts.

Austin: You almost had me sold there, but not quite. Yeah, we should go as far back as to where it starts making sense that we care about any of this stuff, I always liked puzzles, my whole life. So, we could start as, fourth grade Austin or second grade Austin or something, putting together board puzzle, what do they call, jigsaw puzzles?

Taylorr: There you go, yeah.

Austin: Or, I had this toy car at one point, and you could take that thing all the way apart, and apparently it impressed my mom a lot that I could do that, so I still wear that as a badge of honor, obviously, as you do. What about you, how early did you like any of this stuff?

Taylorr: Oh, man. It was really early on, well, I was kind of a geek, I was always big into solving problems, so naturally, I was really into math and science and things and a lot of games, Pokemon was my jam growing up, so that was always fun. And then because of the video game stuff and just inherently, just being broke all the time, I wanted to play all these games I didn’t have access to, so I learned how to hack consoles, PSPs and Wiis and Xboxes and things, just so I could get a bunch of free games. So, I think my love for technology happened there.

Austin: This is just a joke, Microsoft, if you’re listening to this. Just a joke.

Taylorr: Yeah. I’m not supposed to say all the systems out loud, yeah, allegedly, allegedly.

Austin: Allegedly, Thank you for clarifying.

Taylorr: For sure, yeah. LimeWire days, basically. So, yeah, I think my love for tech.

Austin: Or do you remember when Tor first happened? You could get on the dark web, and everybody was obsessed with getting on the dark web.

Taylorr: Oh, goodness. We’ve come a long way, to say the least.

Austin: Yep.

Taylorr: So, yeah, I think the love for technology kind of started there.

Austin: Yeah. It’s funny because both of us had that same geeky sort of love of technology, but both of us took totally different paths that ended up with us coming together, but not even with technology, with sales, which is really random. The number of crazy decisions that had to be made to lead to us even meeting in Arizona is.

Taylorr: Yeah, we weren’t even from Arizona, each of us, we came from different parts of the country to be in Arizona and then.

Austin: Not even close either, not Vegas and Santa Fe, New Mexico or something, across the country.

Taylorr: Literally. Minnesota to Arizona, what, Seattle, Portland?

Austin: Portland. We were in Portland.

Taylorr: Portland to Arizona. Yeah.

Austin: Yeah. That was a big leap.

Taylorr: Big jump.

Austin: Yeah. And sales, I hired you as my sales rep, there’s a fun fact for those of you listening. Taylorr was originally my employee.

Taylorr: I’m so far you guys. Look at me now.

Austin: Yep. Taylorr, just so everybody knows was the best sales rep that the whole company had ever seen; he got talked about on national calls with reps across the country. It was quite impressive.

Taylorr: I don’t know. Well, I learned from the best.

Austin: Awe, shucks, except I was never any good at sales honestly. I was good enough.

Taylorr: But you know how to teach me how to be good at it though, that was.

Austin: Yeah, I liked that part way more.

Taylorr: Right. The empowerment.

Austin: So, and just for context, this gig that Taylorr and I were working at at the time, was really for all intents and purposes, a multi-level marketing company, MLM. Yeah, though it is, and we won’t get into exactly who because of legal stuff, obviously, but they were pretty well put together for a MLM, this wasn’t any selling market or selling makeup at parties at your friend’s house on Friday night kind of a thing. This was going to a big-box store and generating leads or closing deals on products and services, so they were a pretty well-connected company, but it really was multi-level marketing. 

One office existed as an independent office and they’d hire a bunch of sales reps, it was very high turnover, you’d go into these big-box stores and do your job, but really your job was to build a team of other sales guys and then help them go into new markets, so I was in Portland and that got me pushed into Arizona to open up a new office. And then Taylorr and I actually opened up an office together in Denver, Colorado, so that that was the basic premise there, and what an interesting experience because if you’re going to train the number of entry-level salespeople that you have to train nationally with very strict rules to be compliant with your clients’ big-box store rules and everything, that was systems to the T. 

That was the combination of technology and processes and people in a masterful way, so while I don’t necessarily agree with the business model, respect to the people that run those companies because they really know how to work systems.

Taylorr: We learned so much, I credit so much of what I’ve learned to that process. How many salespeople did we hire? Not even recruited, hire.

Austin: A lot, hundreds, thousands maybe.

Taylorr: Yeah, right. And then how many interviews of hiring those salespeople did we run, thousands?

Austin: Many thousands.

Taylorr: And training, how many salespeople do you think you personally trained in that journey?

Austin: Hundreds, for sure.

Taylorr: Hundreds, hundreds of them. And what was crazy about that kind of talking to the entry-level piece and, as you said earlier, it was the culmination of the tech, the process, and the people coming together, I didn’t even know that was happening basically, at this point in the journey. I had no idea that is what systems actually meant; it’s kind of funny, looking back on the whole thing now how much appreciation we had for it and what that’s actually turned into. But when you bring on a bunch of entry-level salespeople and they’ve never sold anything before and you have to get them to turn into high-performing salespeople, again, following the very strict rules and regulations of big-box stores and managing those client relationships. 

It’s crazy how standardized things have to get so that you can train people at scale who have never done that before and then just become masterful at that process; there’s no other way to train that many people and perform that highly without stuff perfectly documented and every scenario worked out.

Austin: Yep. Well, and that’s just for any big company look at McDonald’s, people talk about McDonald’s as a case study of this all the time and it’s true, you can get, I think maybe it’s Dan Pink that is originally attributed to this sort of saying around McDonald’s, but you can get a pimply 16-year old to perfectly operate an entire cook-line in a McDonald’s and it’s because everything is documented so clearly. Everything is a system that gets followed and so anybody can do it, as long as you have the basic skill set required to do anything, then you can do it with a system and do it at scale, which is amazing. 

So, yes, that company did that so well and taught us some very important skills that helped us segue out of that selling stuff, anybody that’s going to own a business has to be able to sell stuff just.

Taylorr: That’s right.

Austin: Flat out and hire a team and train those people and recruit the right people and give them enough structure to their role so that they can go do something, there are some of the core competencies that I feel I have as an entrepreneur that came from that experience.

Taylorr: Oh, for sure.

Austin: Very grateful.

Taylorr: It’s where you cut your teeth.

Austin: For sure.

Taylorr: What was your favorite system from that work that we did?

Austin: Oh, man. Well, we were talking about this before and the TPCD Chart is hilarious.

Taylorr: TPCD.

Austin: And you guys, there were systems for literally everything, there were systems for how you would unify in the morning, for example, if everybody was in agreement with something, you would say, JUICE, which stood for Join Us in Creating Excitement. So, even how you would respond to your leaders was systemized, which gets into some culty stuff, so MLM companies, watch out if you’re interested. So anyways, weird systems, but the TPCD chart was freaking brilliant, we worked in a home improvement big-box store, so take your pick, they’re all basically the same. 

Inside all of them, they have these, we called them, paint chips, which is probably the actual term for them, but it was the little cards, that had a few different shades of paints, you could take them home and kind of see what it would look like at your own house. So, you would pick one of those up, fold it in half usually, and then you’d write TPCD, and this stood for Talks, presentations, Closes, and Deals; and so you’d put this paint ship in your pocket and have a pen with you, and then as you went throughout your day and you were selling stuff to the patrons of this store, you would just take a tally mark of where you got in the sales process for that person.

So, for example, we were selling kitchen remodeling stuff, Taylorr and I, well, our campaign was, so we’d go in and we’d talk to somebody shopping in the store and say, hey, how’s it going? And no matter where we got after that, that was a talk, that was somebody we got in front of; and then a presentation would be us being like, hey, so we have this thing, it has something to do with kitchen remodeling, is that something you’re interested in? 

And at that point, if they were then we would continue on and if not, they would stop at the P, that’s presentation because they’re not further qualified to close them, and then as you can probably tell it’s a linear progression here, so eventually you’d ask whether or not you wanted them to come out and give you a quote, and if they said, yes, that was a deal and it was closed more or less. And so, as you’re going throughout the day, you would categorize your sales conversations based on one of those four categories that they got to in that linear progression of the sales conversation, and then you would, or, yeah, it would correspond to the sections of your sales script. 

And so, the next day, when you’d go in and do your sales training with your leader, they would be able to look at the sales conversations that you had, and then look at the script and just say, hey, you had way fewer presentations than we would expect you to have. And so, today when you go out and sell stuff, try to qualify a little bit better, ask some more intelligent conversations to see if you can deepen the relationship with that person to sell them the thing, and so then the rep would go out to the store that day and would improve their short story. And the next day they’d come back, and we’d look at their TPCD and see if it improved, and if it improved, we’d go to the next thing, it was cake, man.

Taylorr: It was so easy.

Austin: It was so easy.

Taylorr: Just think about that for a moment, you have a paint chip and there’s nothing fancy about this system, it’s just, you’re literally putting tallies on a piece of paper in four categories and perfectly able to tell where in a sales script that person is lacking or doing wonderful in or whatever it is, so you can critique in real-time without having to be there in-person at that store to train them. It just doesn’t get easier than that.

Austin: Yeah, it’s true. People were effective with it, it was amazing because then at that point it’s either you’re not using the script well enough, you’re not correctly walking them through the sales process they’d say.

Taylorr: Qualifying.

Austin: Or you’re not getting enough activity in, those are your two problems, as long as you’re addressing those two things, the total number of people you’re talking to and the quality of the conversations that you’re having, you’re going to win eventually. It doesn’t matter how bad you were, and that’s how we were able to take people that had never done sales before and train them to be really good at this stuff because it’s just math at that point.

Taylorr: It’s just a system.

Austin: Yeah, it takes the thinking out of it and allows people to just go and do, which is what they love. So, that’s my favorite system, what was your favorite system?

Taylorr: Oh, man, I don’t know, I think you just took mine. You know what my favorite acronym was though, was SYSTEMS. I think this is when we first had the presentation of SYSTEMS as we know it today, and so the company had this acronym for the phrase SYSTEMS because they also really believed in, obviously, having systems as we’ve alluded to and little did we know how powerful they actually were. I think maybe I just took it for granted when I first heard this stuff and I just kind of played along, but it’s this acronym, SYSTEMS, Save Yourself Some Time, Energy, Money, and Stress. 

So, every time, and this was helpful for me as a manager, as you’re training a team and you’re thinking about ways to train them or help them improve; I was always thinking in the context of, what system could we create in order to help solve this particular problem? And it was, day in and day out for what, two years straight, just constantly in that mentality, what system is going to solve this problem, what system is going to solve this problem so that we can save some time, energy, money, and stress. And when I first heard that for the first time, the thing that stood out to me the most was just time, if you can save the time of all of the guesswork of constantly reinventing the wheel, there’s nothing more attractive to me than saving time in this life.

Money, that stuff can be created, time, it can’t in my opinion, so if there’s absolutely anything that can make me more efficient or make me better at something or help me troubleshoot something faster or not reinvent the wheel, that was definitely something I was interested in. So, I think the thing that stuck with me the most throughout all that was just that acronym alone, it’s still something I think of to this day, we build something for Speaker Flow, it’s like, all right, so is this something that’s going to save us some time, energy, money, and stress right now? And if the answer is, no, to any of those, it’s not worth creating yet, and if the answer is, yes, to many of those, well, chances are, that’s a higher priority thing to tackle than something else, you know?

Austin: Yeah, that’s so true. Fun fact, that acronym is still on our website to this day, so maybe by the time you’re hearing this, it’s not, but if it is, go and find it and then send us a screenshot, then we’ll give you props for finding it.

Taylorr: Yeah, there you go.

Austin: Yeah, man, that was a crazy experience, and, honestly, although there were so many good things, it didn’t really end on a good note, that one. There was some questionable morality the higher you went, and this is why we’re not mentioning names so that we can speak freely about that experience. Not ideal, it was really heavy on the taking advantage of people side of things, which is just not good, it’s just, yep, there’s an imbalance in your ethics in the world when you’re trying to play those games, not something we wanted to deal with. So as soon as we got a hint of that, we bailed from that company.

Taylorr: Immediately.

Austin: Which looking back on things was wonderful. And, honestly, our quality of life wasn’t that great at that point either; it was a great vision, and we learned a lot, but Taylorr correct me if I’m wrong, I believe your grocery list at one point was a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs and a jar of peanut butter. Is that right?

Taylorr: That is correct, yeah. And that was also donating plasma, I remember one night I came home, because you have to donate plasma to bridge the gap paying for rent in Denver, just trying to figure the whole thing out, and I had a $15 grocery budget, but that didn’t account for coffee during the week or an energy drink if I was out and about or something. So, I’d have to keep that budget as low as possible to kind of anticipate other things I might want to buy throughout the week, but, yeah, I remember coming home one night, I passed out three times in a row because of the amount of plasma that was given that week on top of eating bread, peanut butter and eggs for months, months on end that was pretty much all I ate. 

Not good, we were eating rice and beans there for a while, no joke, just because that was the easiest thing to buy that was so inexpensive. Not a good quality of life.

Austin: No, not good at all. Working long hours.

Taylorr: You do cut your teeth somewhere and teach you the grit, build so much character. I don’t look back on any of those memories as negative things, but more like, why would I do that to myself? I care so much more about myself than I think I did back then, but nonetheless, it’s where some of the most formative character-building years I think took shape for us. So, although it didn’t maybe end on the best note and our quality of life, wasn’t the greatest by the end of it, I think it taught us what to look for in the next chapter of things, you know?

Austin: Yeah, for sure. We actually parted ways at that point too for a while.

Taylorr: Yeah, I went back to Minnesota for.

Austin: We didn’t even talk for, what, a year, something like that?

Taylorr: Yeah, it was almost a year. Yeah.

Austin: Yeah. You dipped to Minnesota, I went out to Utah, to continue on numerous, we kept on the entrepreneurial thing. You were freelancing as a marketing person.

Taylorr: That’s right.

Austin: I was serving process for the courts in Utah and Colorado and working.

Taylorr: Yeah, like the ‘you’ve been served’ people.

Austin: Yeah, the ‘you’ve been’, yep, that’s exactly right. So, yep, which was actually kind of a fun gig that taught me a lot about systems too, actually, but yeah, and then we got brought back together, eventually, obviously.

Taylorr: Yeah, I think we just reconnected, I think that was at the time, just when I was maybe ideating the agency, was that?

Austin: Yeah, that was, you told me that you wanted to start a marketing agency.

Taylorr: Marketing agency, that’s right.

Austin: And asked me to come help. So, that was that. Traffic crafters.

Taylorr: Traffic crafters. I still love that brand name, that was such a, yeah, I think it was a fun brand.

Austin: Yeah, you could find it out there on the way back machine, people, so go check it out. Yeah. And that was what, six or nine months, a year? How long were we working on that?

Taylorr: Oh, yeah, it must have been about a year.

Austin: It probably was, right?

Taylorr: Yeah, we had a business partner, we set up the website, got the services going, we even tried selling it there for a while.

Austin: Yeah, we did, yep.

Taylorr: Well, we had freelancing clients from our past lives though, which was helpful, so that’s why we started the agency in the first place, but even then.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: It still wasn’t selling.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: No traffic was being crafted.

Austin: No, not by us. Yeah. And even, yeah, to your whole point where, when we explain the history of Speaker Flow, Taylorr typically talks about this point where we could generate with however much traffic somebody wants with marketing because it’s just math at the end of the day. There are things that work, you plan on what you want to do, you execute on them, you test them, that common pattern started right about that time. But, yeah, it’s just not gratifying at all, and if somebody doesn’t have a backend, then it’s not even useful, you can send them leads all they want.

Taylorr: Yeah, that was the biggest issue. You’d just work with a small business, mom-and-pop shop, an eCommerce store, even speakers as we’ll come to learn here in a minute, and you can have all these glorious marketing and sales strategies and do funnels and all this nonsense. But if there’s no backend system to support the thing, CRMs and email marketing tools and basic lead nurturing knowledge, and all the other things you need, marketing is the last thing somebody needs to be focusing on at that point. 

If we don’t have basic business systems in place, there’s just no ability to do any marketing a lot of the time, plus you’d start making money because, again, marketing is just, it’s a digital faucet, just there are things that work, there are things that don’t, you plan, you execute, you test over and over again, you’re going to get traffic, you’re going to get results. But the problem though, is once you start getting somebody results, it’s so extrinsic that they’re like, oh, okay, more results, more results, more results, I remember being so frustrated with the freelance work and the agency work just because it was so money-driven, I felt like a, I don’t know, a pawn in their game of chess rather than creating the impact I actually wanted to create, you know?

Austin: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, we had the sort of lucky break too, of being involved in the speaking industry, and that was really the only reason that pulled us out of it because we thought, okay, well, we’re involved in the speaking industry and there’s backstory there that I don’t how relevant it is, we could go on forever with this stuff, you guys. But we had some clients in the speaking industry, and we knew that we liked working with them and we knew that they had issues related to generating more revenue, maybe it was marketing, maybe it wasn’t is what we came to find out. 

But that there was all this missing backbone-related stuff that you were just talking about that if brought to the table and connected with a good marketing plan and being the type of businesses that they are, they could be really successful with it. And it seems kind of logical looking back on things, but at the time that was just what people were telling us they wanted too, we didn’t even have to manufacture the idea really, people just asked us for it enough that we were like, okay, well, we’ll figure out a way to make this work.

Taylorr: Yeah. What’s fascinating too is I kept hearing the same things over and over again, I still hear these to this day, in sales calls all the time, but it’s often not even making the money that’s the thing, the thing I hear the most from our group of people is, and we feel the same way, you guys. If you want to have more impact, you want to have a business that’s producing the results you want and that might be making more money, that might not be, it kind of depends on where you’re at in the whole thing? And do you want to have clarity on where you’re heading next? 

And we just kept hearing that over and over again, we just want to create the bigger impact, I want to work on my business, not in my business and sure there were some extra symptoms of maybe wanting to have more money or wanting to have more leads or whatever it is. But that generally wasn’t the only scenario that people wanted, some folks had the money, but they were more or less disorganized, and they wanted systems to be able to help them, or some people realized in order to have an impact, I need to be more organized and have more systems then I could make more money or whatever that might be. 

But I found it fascinating because, in marketing, everyone has one goal, which is to just generate more leads and apparently make more money, but what was fascinating when we got into this space, it was less about that, and it was so much more about the impact that they wanted to create, the content you wanted to put out there, the message you wanted to spread. And if you got to make a lot of money in that process, that’s obviously the goal, but it was so much more intrinsically motivated than I think I was used to.

Austin: Yeah. Purpose-driven.

Taylorr: Purpose-driven, that’s right. It’s what made it exciting, the idea of being able to help all of these awesome people who are out there on stages, training, doing workshops, I believe all of you, we believe all of you want to make the world a better place. Inherently, that is your mission, and you have some perspective that you’ve brought to the table to help the world make that difference, and, yeah, just the idea of being able to help that group of people just achieve a little bit more, even if it’s not much, but just a little bit more, knowing that contribution betters the world and gets your messages out there, there was just nothing more exciting than seeing that actualize with our very early clients, you know?

Austin: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and thank God for the NSA, that was cool, we were able to totally just test this out by working with a bunch of different NSA members, the cool thing about Speaker Flow is that we’ve really, we’ve taken our own medicine this whole time. And not to just wave our finger in the air because we’ve screwed up so many times, but it started with a good idea and then we just went out and did it with a few people and did it for free for our first few times, and then it worked, and we figured out how to improve it. 

And really, if we’re fast-forwarding into the today, that’s basically the exact same premise that we have now, it’s just way more refined, we’re able to do it so much better because that process has repeated itself enough times. It’s evolution, it’s making evolution work in your business, where you take the best of what you’re doing at any given point and keep doing more of that and then phase out the things that don’t work.

Taylorr: That’s right.

Austin: Yeah.

Taylorr: It was interesting too because this was one of the first businesses where I wasn’t looking for magic wands, I think in the past, the agency, I ran this eCommerce, ran lol, I tried to put up this eCommerce store at one point, but hold on, I lost my train of thought. I’m going to have to make an editing note, what was I just saying? That it was about the.

Austin: Is one of the first businesses where you were chasing.

Taylorr: Oh, yeah, gotcha. Thank you. So, this was one of the first businesses where I didn’t feel we were chasing some strategy that someone else had used, it was truly our own process, we just try it out and then iterate on it. And we just doubled down on what worked and remove what didn’t and it’s not like we weren’t learning anything outside of the work that we were doing or pulling in any more input from books or podcasts or things like that, but I wasn’t actively seeking magic wands or strategies that would help grow the thing, we were just trying to figure out what process works. 

And the only way we found out to sort that out is to plan it, execute it and then test and then as Austin said just double down on what worked and remove what didn’t, I think it was, Speaker Flow was the first embodiment of what I believe systems really is. It’s not taking all of this content that’s out there, that’s claiming the world, that if we were just to implement this one thing, it’s going to drastically change our business, chances are, it’s a good idea and chances are, it’s worked for a handful of people, but will it work for you? 

Is it actually part of your business you want to run? Is it heading in the direction that you actually want to create? And I kind of found that in the past I was creating a business I didn’t really want to run, and so, by kind of iterating on your own process, I feel inherently, we ended up creating a business that we love running because we’ve just doubled down on the things that we love doing the most and kind of removed everything else, and I think it’s a lot of the same philosophy that we try and provide our clients, you know?

Austin: Yeah, for sure. So, I imagine that there’s a portion of people that are listening to this, well, there’s probably a portion that is already working with us, so thank you for all of your continued support, and hopefully, you found this little bit of history informative. There’s probably a portion of people that have heard this up until this point and are trying to now bridge the gap between this philosophy of ours and seeing the systems versus what they know about Speaker Flow, which is, I think they have a CRM or something and there’s some technology and there’s this community thing with Speaker Flow University. 

And so, Taylorr, can you, A, summarize the philosophy of Speaker Flow simply, for our listeners, and then, B, explain how we actualize this, and this is not just for the sake of being shameless self-promotion, although, it’s certainly some, it’s our podcast, so I think we reserve the right to do that if we want to.

Taylorr: For sure. It’s sponsored by Speaker Flow.

Austin: Yeah. But just right now, I want this episode to be a place where we could point people and say, look, if you want to understand what Speaker Flow is all about, go listen to this. So, can you help us, Taylorr?

Taylorr: Absolutely. So, you guys have gotten the context, we’re deeply passionate about systems, we’re deeply passionate about helping thought leaders run a business that they love. And so, in a very brief nutshell, we help thought leaders, so speakers, coaches, consultants, trainers; plan, execute and test on all of their systems, and we define systems as the technology that you use, meaning our operating system that we built, the process you follow with all that technology and the people you have around you to help get that done across every area of your business because your business should run like an engine. 

You have your growth department, which is meant for generating some business, and you have your experience department, which is meant for making the client delivery experience amazing, and you have your admin department, you’re making your business run as easy as possible, and when all those three things are connected, you really get this engine going. And so, when we take growth experience and admin and build those systems, the tech, the process, and people around them and we constantly plan, execute and test around them, inherently, you end up creating a business you love because you’re able to double down on what works, remove the things that don’t, and you’re able to fail quicker, so to speak and maybe not even look at failure as true failure, but as a step in the right direction. 

And so, now what Speaker Flow is known for is our technology, but also the process that comes with that, the coaching program, and so really, well, I think where we got a lot of our velocity from is this operating system we’ve created, this one place to be able to run all of your technology for your business. And then once you have the tech inherently, you have to know what the process is to follow, and how do you actually sell and how do you market and how do you operate better? And how do you get all your financials together and how do you make everything talk to one another and how do you plan out your business? 

It just goes on and on as you continue to grow the business and you just need strategic coaches and advisors to help bridge that gap. And I think our core differentiator here is really this is business coaching, but the big difference here is that we can help bridge the gap between the strategies that work and the systems to actually make it happen and the process to be able to create the business you want, so rather than being left to your own devices, to take a good idea and try and implement it, you have somebody to help bridge that gap, which often tends to be a large one.

Austin: Yeah. Man, you heard it here folks.

Taylorr: Can tell I’ve done that a few thousand times.

Austin: We are not going to go any further with that. I think we’ve said what needs to be said. Taylorr, this has been fun, man, I’m glad that we did this.

Taylorr: This has been really fun; I think we have to do this more often.

Austin: Yeah, I think we will, tell us, people, if you’d like to hear more of just Austin and Taylorr rambling just, I don’t know, tweet at us or something, we’ll see it, we’ll take note of that. If you want us to keep bringing on people that are not us for one, I don’t want you to, number two, tune in next week because we have another one of those episodes as we do. So, shall we send it off, Taylorr?

Taylorr: Let’s send it off.

Austin: Be my guest, make this happen, man.

Taylorr: Hey, if you like this episode don’t forget to rate it, like it, subscribe to it, and if you want more awesome resources like this, go to speakerflow.com/resources.

Austin: See you next time. Bye.

Taylorr: Thank you so much for chiming in. I just wanted to take a second to thank our sponsor, Auxbus. Auxbus is the all-in-one suite of tools you need to run your podcast and it’s actually what we run here at Speaker Flow for Technically Speaking; it makes planning podcasts simple; it makes recording podcasts simple; it even makes publishing podcasts to the masses simple, and quite honestly, Technically Speaking wouldn’t be up as soon as it is without Auxbus. Thank you so much Auxbus, and if you are interested in checking Auxbus out, whether you’re starting a podcast, or you have one currently get our special offer auxbus.com/speakerflow or click the link below in our show notes.