Technically Speaking

Short and Sweet AI makes it really easy to feel productive. You build a thing, tweak a thing, get the little zing of progress, and the goal you set for this quarter doesn't move. Busy and productive start to look identical. Kara Barnes is the founder of Backstage Ops, an operations firm that does strategic planning, systems work and fractional COO support for growing businesses. She walks through...

Short and Sweet Most speakers who've landed a few paid gigs can't say where the next one is coming from. It's referrals and luck. So they stay busy instead. A new website, a new one sheet, a new deck. Anything but the outreach. Dan Irvin is a full-time keynote speaker and the CEO of The Speaker Lab. Last year he spoke 42 paid gigs, and the work that booked them took about three hours a week. In th...

Short and Sweet Most thought leaders don't lose sleep over the stage. They lose it in the middle of the night, wondering if they followed up with that client or remembered one of the dozens of things that have to happen before every event. Dan Kerrigan is Chief of Staff and COO at the Trust Edge Leadership Institute, the team behind Hall of Fame speaker David Horsager. In this episode he walks thr...

Short and Sweet Most thought leaders never designed their brand. They built it one talk, one website update and one coach's advice at a time. Now it's a Frankenstein, and the people booking stages can feel the disconnect. Tiffany Neuman spent fifteen years building brands in the corporate world before turning to speakers, authors, coaches and consultants. In this episode she walks through her Bran...

Short and Sweet AI can write your book, build your website, and put you in front of a crowd of 20,000 that never existed. Which means none of those things set you apart anymore. Your buyers already know it. David Newman runs Do It Marketing and wrote Market Eminence, a book about earning attention in a noisy, AI-fueled market. In this episode he makes the case that you can become a business celebr...

Short and Sweet Every thought leader has a boardroom in their head. Six voices around a table, all trying to run the business. Most of us only listen to the loudest two or three, and the ones we ignore are the ones that bite us later. Theresa Rose has spent her career helping experts get clear on their brand and the business behind it. In this episode she starts with cocktail napkin clarity, her w...

Short and Sweet Before anyone books you, they stalk you. They spend 10 to 30 seconds on your website or LinkedIn to see if you look legit, current, and worth a call. John DeMato used to be the guy who hated being in front of a camera. Now he helps experts make sure those 30 seconds work in their favor. In this episode, John walks through the whole system: the strategy call he runs before every sho...

Short and Sweet Jake White used to spam school principals because the program was worth it. Then he stopped outbound marketing cold turkey, started showing up at the two conferences where his buyers actually gather, and watched Vive18 triple three years running. In this episode, Jake walks through the whole system: how he found the right room (he asked his favorite client), why he pays to sponsor...

In this episode – the final episode of Season 3 – we're breaking down everything you need to know about us, including how we got here and, most importantly, where we're going from here.   This one's jam-packed with news and updates, so we'll keep it short and sweet, but don't skip it. This is an episode you won't want to miss!   Show Notes:   ✅ Want to learn more about SpeakerFlow, our system, an...

There's a lot of truth in the phrase "Hindsight's 20-20" – no doubt about that – but it rings especially true as a business owner.   In fact, ask any entrepreneur, thought leader, speaker, you name it, and they'll share a host of things they've learned along their journey as a business owner.   To share her own business experience with us, we're joined in this episode by speaker, author, and coach...

Everyone wants to be known for doing something great, for making their mark, and, as a thought leader, that mark can also be what takes you from "getting by" to "making a decent living" in the industry.   So how do you find your big idea? How do you build a mindset that keeps you innovating and continually generating ideas for your audience?   Here to talk about that with us is keynote speaker, au...

There are plenty of challenges that come with running a small business – Any thought leader will tell you that.   But there are also countless benefits, not the least of which is the closer-knit relationships and exceptional experiences you can provide for clients.   In this episode, we're joined by speaker, financial expert, and owner of Get Looped, Chris Lautenslager to explain his "Get Looped"...

For many business owners – large and small – the thought of building better systems is an enticing one.   But it's also daunting. For instance, how do you know what components a system needs? What's the trigger for when one of these components needs to do something? How do you make it repeatable and iterative?   And, most importantly, how do you measure the results of the system to make sure it's...

When you think about your favorite places to shop, there are likely a few things they all have in common, like polite and friendly team members or being quick to help when you have a question or concern.   It's also likely that these reasons keep you from looking at their competitors. After all, you've been happy with them – Why look elsewhere?   In the same way, providing an exceptional experienc...

Outbound sales is, undoubtedly, one of the hardest things to master when running your own business, especially if you don't have any prior experience in sales.   And even if you do, it can be frustrating, feeling like you can't get your foot in the door with potential clients or not knowing which sales strategies are worth trying.   That said, one tried-and-true approach to sales is a simple one,...

We've all stumbled on instances where we didn't seem to be getting through to someone.   Maybe they were a potential client who misunderstood what products or services you provide. Maybe they were an existing client and, somewhere in your work together, their expectations were misaligned.   In any case, the best business owners are always on the lookout for ways to better communicate, and here to...

We've discussed virtual business ownership at length on this podcast and how to use tools like your website, email marketing tools, and CRM to make the most of incoming leads.   But one tool we haven't touched on is Google Business which, turns out, can be a secret weapon for getting in front of – and catching the attention of – your ideal clients.   Joining us to explain that in more detail is se...

Now more than ever, it can seem like everyone and their brother has a podcast, but it's also fair to say that not all podcasts are created equal.   If you're thinking of launching a podcast yourself, this episode is all about how to get above that "average," and who better to teach us that than voiceover expert and audio engineer Gary Maholm.   Having edited more than 12,000 podcast episodes – and...

Whether you're a seasoned public speaker or just starting your journey, there's a notable difference between speaking on stage and speaking on camera.   In fact, even if you're a skilled communicator in person, it can be easy to get flustered or appear inexperienced when you're being recorded.   To help you avoid this, we're joined in this episode by speaker and entrepreneur Wendy Russell.   Perha...

For as long as SpeakerFlow's existed, one of the most common questions we've heard from clients and connections alike is a simple one: "What's working for other people?"   In other words, "Which business systems are other thought leaders using to produce consistent, reliable results?"   So, without further ado, this episode is all about the best of the best: the systems we see used most frequently...

When you hear the word "accountability," if you're like most people, you probably think of something similar to "responsibility."   You might think of your job description, the projects you accomplish as part of that job, and the tasks that make up your day-to-day working routine.   In reality, though, "accountability" is all about your core values and acting in a way that not only produces result...

Running a business is no picnic – On that much, we can all agree – but it's even harder when you're drowning in the day-to-day operations.   Put simply, no entrepreneur wants to run a business that sucks. They want one that's well organized, speed-optimized, and creates the lifestyle they've always wanted.   With this in mind, this episode is all about removing the parts of running your business t...

Every business owner wants to know, with certainty, that they're offering something valuable, something their clients will definitely want.   But how do you find that "something"? How do you take as much uncertainty out of innovation as you can?   Here is discuss that with us is the pioneer of Jobs-To-Be-Done Theory, the inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) process, and the founder and...

We've covered Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) on this podcast a fair number of times, but we've rarely gotten into the details.   In this episode, we're changing that and diving right into the podcast equivalent of the beginner's guide to SEO for thought leaders.   Joining us is Brandon Leibowitz from SEO Optimizers, "a digital marketing company that focuses on helping small and medium-sized b...

There are a handful of things that automatically give you an air of credibility as a thought leader, one of them being the title of "author."   However, for many speakers, coaches, and consultants, writing and launching a book can seem like a massive hurdle.   We're joined by writer, editor, and the president of Leverage2Market Associates, Linda Popky, to explain why this doesn't have to be the ca...