Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Richard Bliss, and you're listening to the podcast Digital First Leadership. And I am thrilled to be here with you today as we talk about things in today's world on the digital world, particularly, that leaders of large corporations to small businesses to solopreneurs all need to know about how to be effective online. And I have a very special guest today. I gotta tell you all my guests are special, but today it's a uniquely special guest. I have with me Austin Graham, and Austin is the cofounder and president of SpeakerFlow, a CRM package designed specifically generally for those in the speaking professional speaking business. Austin, thanks for joining me. Oh, it's an honor to be here, my friend. One of my favorite people on the planet. I've learned so much from you. It's such a privilege to be able to give back a little bit. Well, that goes both ways, and that's why we're here because you and I have worked together now for, it's been a little while. We've known each other off and on, you and speaker Flo, Taylor, the, other cofounder, and I have interacted when I've been at some of the NSA, National Speakers Association's, events. Having spoken at a couple of those, you have another one coming up in just a couple of days as of this recording. The, influence 2024 influence in Denver, Colorado. I think you and Taylor are gonna be there with speaker flow. Right? Oh, yeah. Yep. We'll be there. Very excited. It's fun fun venue too, which is good. And so what we're talking about let's just we'll dive in here because what we're talking about is that in today's world, one of the biggest challenges that a small business or solopreneur has is, and I experienced this, tracking and engaging with sales. Tracking the sales, engaging with the sales, staying on top of the sales, a CRM, customer resource management platform. And I gotta tell you, before I and so transparency, I am a customer. This is not a product endorsement for speaker flow, but this is I've learned so much. I thought, okay. Other people need to learn about this. Because before I met you guys, my involvement with lead capture and was people I knew. Maybe I wrote them down on a 3 by 5 card, or maybe I kept them in the spreadsheet. Not really. Mostly, I just kept them in email and sent them to my EA who kept track of, who did I talk to last week? And it went okay. And then COVID hit, and it went crazy. And I I was losing business. I was losing business because people were reaching out. I was forgetting. I was dropping the ball. I forgot what we talked about. All of those things started to and I had heard Taylor present to me, your cofounder, present about speaker flow a year earlier. I wasn't in a position. But then the next time I heard him speak, I was at an event there in San Antonio. It all of a sudden clicked that, oh, no. No. No. I need this. So let's talk about this. As a, let's say, a speaker or solopreneur or a small business, the moment I had, where does that come from? Because you gotta encounter that almost on a daily basis. Yeah. For sure. You know, one of the things that's really stuck with me over the years is this statistic. And, look, I I have no idea where this came from. I don't even know how accurate it is, honestly, but intuitively, I feel like it's true. So we're just gonna that's as close as I can get to accuracy here. But it says something like, over the course of your whole lifetime, you'll be able to keep track of, more or less, about a 150 meaningful relationships. K? And we're talking about everybody. We're talking about, like, your school teachers and your childhood friends and obviously, like, your relatives and all of your best friends and your acquaintances and your spouse's friends and acquaintances, like all of those people. Right? It doesn't leave a whole lot of room left over for a person to really be able to keep track of people. And if we're running a business, ultimately, like if you just distill any business down, it's just people working in some capacity with other people and what that is is a relationship. So if you distill business down to its like most fundamental, like root cause principles thinking it's, it's just relationships. And so if we're like bound by our biology to some degree, to the number of people that we can have a meaningful relationship with. And we are running this business that requires having lots of relationships on top of all of our other personal relationships, you're kind of, like, at a disadvantage by default. And so if you look backwards, like, business is obviously not a new thing. So, like, one of the earliest, complaints that we have is, of the stone tablet of somebody complaining about the weight of their rice being incorrect or something. So documentation in business is like one of the most basic principles of business is you have to keep track of all the goings on of the business. And the relationships that we have are certainly one of those things. And our methods for doing that as time has progressed have changed dramatically. Obviously we're not using like stone tablets and chisels anymore, But it went to Rolodex cards, you know, and everybody remembers that action of flipping the Rolodex cards. And eventually, that progressed into spreadsheets and things. And as computers and things got more sophisticated, they're obviously way better suited to remember tons of information than we are by default or any the other mechanisms mechanisms that we never come up with. So CRMs emerged. And a CRM's entire job is to help a business manage relationships at scale. It's to give you a helping hand knowing that you just literally don't have the ability to keep track of all the people that you need to keep track of. And then inside of that, there's a bunch of microcosms, obviously, and sales is one of those. So we can get into it. Yeah. And I wanna talk about that because one of the biggest challenges I had at looking for a CRM as I was growing as a business was, feature overload. That as I looked at these, it was just it was too much. No. I just at the beginning, I just wanted to keep track of these people. And what did I say to them, and when did I talk to them? I didn't I didn't need landing pages and email this and the no. No. No. Help me do the first step. And and you and I have worked together in the past, and you know that this is one of the principles of a lot that I teach, is what's that very next step I can take that's holding me back? Don't give me everything. ADHD kicks in, and I'm just like, I can't but give me the very next step. And oftentimes, I gotta believe with your customers and as you engage, they come to you with so much in their head or out in the balls in the air. They don't know what to start with. What's the first thing to start with? And that's what happened when I was talking to you as I suddenly saw the very next thing that I could do. In this case, it was, as you just identified, capture those names and see where we're at in the process with them. Yeah. I didn't care anything else. I don't just tell me that. Right? And then I kinda how do you approach that then as people come to you as you work with these individuals? Yeah. So this reminds me of one of my favorite phrases ever, which is big doors swing on small hinges. It's so true in so many areas of life, and it absolutely is here. The technology that we have that has become so sophisticated over the years for a variety of reasons, but a big one is that it to be able to compete, right? These companies are constantly trying to add the newest, coolest, greatest thing. And there's just been a lot of technology that's been built up over the years. And so we found that a lot of the software tools that are out there these days are like less like a niche product that does one really specific thing, and they've become like these amalgamations of different stuff that can get done. Right? And on top of that, you have, like, the whole Internet marketing world that's, like, constantly talking about funnels and opt ins and lead magnets. This. Right? Yeah. It's Landing pages and and campaigns and yeah. Pick an acronym. There's tons and tons and tons of them. Yeah. It is insane. And so, like, people are really easily distracted by that kind of stuff. It feels like those are the things that actually matter. But at the end of the day, based on my own observations of people running their businesses, those are not the things that typically move the needle for this business model. At least this is a service based high touch high ticket business. So we gotta contextualize that obviously. But, yeah, like the thing that makes a difference is being able to not forget that people exist. Like, I cannot beat that drum enough. In fact, here, I'll back this up. Every year we create this report. It's called the state of the industry report. If you go to speakerflow.com/resources, shameless plug, but you'll find it there. And it's the bet it's the only resource that we know of that's trying to encapsulate the state of the industry from the perspective of the thought leader of the of the speaker, the coach, the consultant, not of the people hiring them, not the bureaus, not the event planners of the speaker that's delivering on it. We ask a ton of questions and obviously being systems people, we ask some things about systems. And so we've been able to find this really interesting correlation for multiple years in a row where people that are using a CRM that are following up with their existing relationships regularly, regularly defined with the example of every 90 days or so. That's not a hard line in the sand board saying people that are touching their existing contacts regularly. That action has a 3 to 7 times multiplier on revenue. It is. Hang on. Stop. Stop there. Sure. K. So we're gonna shift it to my world. So you're saying that if I touch my prospects at least once every 90 days. Is that what you just said? Yeah. Once every 90 days. Hang on. I I made a shift there. Research has shown those who'd have touch points with their prospects at least once every 90 days are now seeing a dramatic increase. What was that number? A 3 to 7 times multiplier on average. Okay. So what happened with me was I decided to deploy your, solution, speaker flow. And within the first 75 days, it paid for itself because I had forgotten about all these people. And once I had to put them into the system, and I was like, oh, yeah. 4 months ago, we talked to this person, and they asked for a proposal. I don't think we sent it to them. And all of a sudden, basically, I found money in my cushions of my couch because I simply as you're saying, I put this in place and now suddenly could track those individuals. And if I switch it over to my world, LinkedIn, this now reinforces what I teach so many salespeople. I did a training this morning, and that is engage with commenting with your prospects on a regular basis, and they will now start to recognize and remember you because you're top of mind, because you're commenting, engaging. Not just posting, trying to drive them to your content, but you're out there actually paying attention to their content. I'd like that number, and I can see that as an easy crossover. Yeah. So good. Yeah. And, you know, I think this brings on such an important thing too because people think about CRMs. And I think a lot of the time we're initially gravitating towards email stuff. Like now I have the ability to send mass emails or be able to send an automated email or be able to just send an email to remind them that we exist or whatever. But a CRM is meant to capture all of the engagements across all of the places that you can have engagements. Social being one of them, hard cards, phone calls, actual live conversations with people. And I think that speaks to what a relationship really is. Right? Like, we think about our friends, the people that are like, we are the clearest example of what a healthy relationship looks like. You go out to dinner with them sometimes and go do some fun activities and you send text messages, letting them know that you're thinking about them. When something's funny, you send it back to them there and you tag them on something cool on social media. And like none of those things are forced. You're just doing it because you're friends and it's the same principles that are existing in all of these other places that we can connect with people. Like, you want people to feel like you're naturally, organically building a relationship with them. And the byproduct of having that perspective on top of having something valuable to offer will lead to business being done. I promise it's just the byproduct. And and it is. And I and I tell people is like, look, start giving before asking. Right? Give to a conversation, give to a comment, give them a compliment, give them something before you start asking for a sales call or a sales meeting or a connection request or whatever. And I like what you're saying there is that build that relationship before, and now suddenly it becomes it becomes a a common mutual, relationship, not just a a one way. I I like that. As we as we get to towards here, towards our time, what kind of advice speakers come to you with their business? They wanna implement this, and there's some behavior probably changes that you see that they probably need to implement. We've identified 1, and that is find a way to do a common touch point. This is what I teach, 3 comments a day on your prospects, 3 comments. And that'll be enough to, drive, profiles. What kind of advice do you provide some for some behavioral changes? Because the whole speaker flow concept is to get into the flow of your business, right, of to focus. So what kind of advice do you provide to them for that? Yeah. Well, I think the thing that you have to start with is prioritization. Like there's so many competing areas of a business that are requiring your attention and that's varying for different people that for some people it could be driving revenue. And so there's a whole myriad of things to talk about there. If you're trying to make money, there's an order of operations there in terms of what's most likely to make you money. For some people though, it's like feeling organized. It's amazing how many people I talk to. They're like, no, my business is crushing it. And literally, I just can't keep up. I've I need to save time doing all this other stuff so I can just focus on delivering for my clients. And so the needs that somebody has, the the scenario that somebody has that's requiring a system like this changes. And so based on that, obviously, the advice changes. But I think that there's just some, like, bigger picture philosophical things that people can think about. And the biggest one is that it goes back earlier actually to all of these various methods of documentation that have existed over time. You have to, like, wrap your arms around that part of being a business owner is being really good at documenting things. And that's the case in every aspect. Like, if you're looking at the financial tax legal realm, literally, that's all it is. It's just documentation. It is just taking very good records about what your business is doing. It's kind of abstract actually, but you have to apply that same thinking to the other areas of your business as well. So you're documenting every time you're having an interaction with somebody and you're documenting where they're at in the process. What's their status, their relationship to your business, how are they connected to your business? And what is the thing that you want them to become? You wanna be documenting what the next step is to make sure that you're not forgetting that and small details that will help that relationship bloom into a deeper relationship. So getting, getting your arms around the fact that whenever you're taking an action, you want that action to be able to be referenced in the future. You want to be able to know that you've taken that action. So logging information, that's a big part of it. The other thing though, is that like what this comes down to is consistency. It's, it's doing little things every day for a really long time. Like there's no, we say all the time, like we don't sell magic wands at speaker flow. And we're we have to be really clear about that because the rest of the industry, software, Internet marketing, the stuff I was talking about earlier, it's all about those massive claims that have no backup. And the reality is is that none of them are real. Like, the thing that works is doing the little actions that add up over time. And you just have to be patient and you have to do them for long enough. But what's interesting is that this is one of the areas like working out at the gym where like, the proof is in the pudding. It's in doing the thing that reinforces how important it is. So here's my challenge. Right? Like, if there's a call to action for people that were listening to this, just go give it a shot. Just try it for, like, 90 days. Commit. Commit for 90 days. And at the end of the 90 days, if you're not getting the benefits of having your life in order, then send me an email and yell at me. And I will happily take that on the cheek. But probably what's gonna happen is you're going to have gone through a transformation in that period of time. You're gonna look back and go, I have no idea how I did this before that. Now how that gets done right, that's abstract, but you can do it. You can you can pick whatever it is that you wanna do. So, for example, back in the 1st 4th April, I was speaking at an event in Springfield, Missouri, and and the co presenter, the, master ceremonies there, and I got to know each other. And so he invited me to participate in a 90 day challenge with him and a bunch of other buddies, and that was to do 100 push ups every day for 90 days minimum. And so I was like, sure. And I gotta tell you, the first day, it's not 100 at a time. It's, like, 20, 10, 20, you know, throughout the day. Yep. And so it took me a while to do a 100, and then I started getting up to a 150, and then about 200. And then right around let's see. April, May, June. The end of June, somebody in the group said, hey. We've been doing this for 90 days. I missed I didn't miss a single day. And then somebody said, let's do an end of the quarter challenge. Let's see if we can all do a 1,000 push ups in a single day. And I don't know about you, but when you hear somebody's gonna do a 1,000 push ups in a day, that's, like, that's impossible. That's a big number. Austin, to come back to what you said, I didn't think I could do it, but I was like, sure. Okay. I'll try it. And I told my wife, okay. Look. Sat it was a Saturday. I'm gonna be doing push ups all day

30 because I'm like, okay. Let's get this started. And do you know that just past noon, I passed a 1,000 push ups? Wow. Nice. Wow. Yeah. There you go. I do not you're gonna people are gonna see me in person, and they're gonna be like, no. I don't believe it. But it's something self awareness. But what you just said was I had no idea that I could do that. But because I did a 100 every day and there were some days I got in bed, and I realized I'd only done 10. I was like, crap. It wasn't about the quality of the push ups. It was about the consistency. Right? And this is what I this is a delicate balance, especially when it comes online like LinkedIn. I wanna tell people this is what I wanna say to them, but I can't I'm gonna say it with your words, and that is it's not quality. It's quantity. But it's not quantity. It's consistency. Meaning, if you wanna be successful on LinkedIn, it's not about creating perfect content. It's about creating consistent content. And the content almost doesn't matter. But that's not exactly true because it doesn't matter. Sure. But the point here is if you wanna have an impact as what you just said, you just need to keep showing up. And I think that's kind of what, you've been able to do is to show that just keeps showing up. I've come into a way from this inspired Austin because immediately I'm looking to go back into my speaker flow, look at those accounts that have maybe slipped a little bit, and now start thinking, okay. I gotta get in front of them. I have one account. I reached out to her a year ago. She's like, yeah. Let's do business. Here's what I wanna do. And then went dark, ghosted me. But do you know? Because of speaker flow, I keep sending her an email, sending her some tips, send her some suggestions, and I'm gonna see her next month at a conference. And I'm just wondering. She's like she's gonna feel guilty because She'll remember you if nothing else. Oh, yeah. I know she's gonna remember me. But I've just kept showing up, showing up, showing up. And so someday and sometimes that happens. Sometimes people will say, look. I listened to you speak 2 years ago, and just now we're now getting around to it. And this is why I do my texting service. I I think you're aware of that where I provide a text to people here in the United States who want to, stay up to my tips. The newsletter goes out, and this podcast is part of that as well. So I wanna say thank you very much for joining me to share a little bit of your insights, especially what's going on with speaker flow. It's an honor. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. My name has been Richard Bliss. My guest has been Austin Grammon, cofounder and president of speaker flow, a CRM package that has general purpose, but really is focused on the professional speaking industry and for those in that same type of business. I have loved it, used it, and you heard me say on the show that it's paid for itself almost immediately. So while this isn't a prod this is not a product placement promotion. I just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed using the product, and that's why I wanted to have yeah. There you go. So thanks for listening. Take care. Hopefully, you've been inspired. And if you have, feel free to reach out, engage with Austin and myself, and, ask any questions you might have so that we can do a follow-up with you. Thanks for listening. Take care.