166. Partnership Behind The Scenes: The Making of The Speaker Co

I finally get to introduce you to my new business partner, Emily Hall! She’s a THREE time guest of the show, but this is the first official appearance since announcing The Speaker Co this summer.

If you’re like me– super curious and intrigued by what other business owners think about– then you’re going to LOVE this unscripted convo where we take you behind the scenes to how we got here, where we’re going next and what YOU can expect moving forward.

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Transcript

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Heather Sager  0:39  

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode today. It's fancy coffee Friday at the time that we're recording this and it is an epic moment because for the first time ever, we have a three time guest on the show, and I'd like to formally introduce y'all to my business partner publicly. Hi, Emily.

Emily Hall  0:59  

Hello, hello. I'm so excited. I didn't realize I was the only third guest, I don't know what a third time guest. 

Heather Sager  1:06  

They kind of like you or something, kind of like it. I'm excited. So y'all, if you haven't heard the announcement, last month's the time of this airing on October, nope. August 8, officially announced that my company, Heather Sager company, I mean, it was just my name, y'all have a personal brand. But my company and Emily's, E+M Creative came together and we birth a new business baby called, The Speaker Co. And Emily's been on a couple times before, so if you want to hear a little bit more about Emily and her background and her former company, you can do that on those episodes. But here's what's funny, the last time that Emily was on the show and we talked about Craft and Commerce, we were totally keeping this secret because we were building the company at the time, but we weren't public, so we had to awkwardly talk about things without telling you that we were building a company behind the scenes, so I'm excited to be totally out with it. How about you?

Emily Hall  2:03  

I am too. I feel like, actually Craft and Commerce was the first time that we were like floating our messaging for the first time to figure out like, how we talk about it, how we say it. I think we were in the middle of some branding things, and we're making some really like high level decisions but it was really weird to have that wall of okay, here are the things that we can talk about behind the scenes and really not talking about anything publicly at the time.

Heather Sager  2:24  

Yeah, it was fun because it was interesting. We're just gonna jump right into one of the specific things that we learned there is, you know, when you make decisions in your business, a lot of times make decisions based on our own preferences and our view of things, and when you and I were talking about logistically, there were some really logical reasons for why we wanted to go into business together. But what was funny is, as we started talking about it, so many people were curious about, like, a business partnership, what's that? Like doing my buddy, the elf voice, but it really started going down the rabbit hole, and that made us go like, oh, there was actually some very specific reasons for audiences around one, we want to get together, so what we're gonna get into that today. But I thought it was really interesting because I think a lot of times as business owners, we can talk, shop a lot and we have to remember that at the end of the day, we have talked about messaging for audience which let's get to it, that's exactly the focus of this episode. So full transparency, Emily and I have had record introduction of The Speaker Co podcast episode on our list since June.

Emily Hall  3:27  

Yep. Yeah, it's been we're, it's been three months.

Heather Sager  3:31  

It's been a minute. It's been a minute and we're finally here. I'm big believer of timing, it's a beautiful thing and we're exactly at the moment, we need to record this. But we've been spinning on this for a bit and so we really wanted to make sure that this episode wasn't just a hey, we had some businesses we got together and here's why. We wanted this to be the most valuable thing. So today, what we're going to talk about, what is this company? What is The Speaker Co? Why did we decide to jump into bed together when it comes to serving our audiences? And I think most importantly, what you can expect as one of our wonderful listeners and audience members slash potential clients in the future because we have some really exciting things up our sleeves and we are building a jumbo jet as we frickin fly this summer. And if you've been following us on social, on our email list, you already see that we've launched a retreat. We've launched the new website, we launched the new blog, the podcast is updated. We have a lot of fun things happening. So we're gonna get into all of that today. So, Emily,

Emily Hall  4:33  

Yes?

Heather Sager  4:34  

I'll put you on the spot here. 

Emily Hall  4:35  

Okay. 

Heather Sager  4:36  

Will you set us up and talk a little bit about what brought you and I together last fall?

Emily Hall  4:47  

Yeah, it was, I think it was a summer we figured out. We went back. We actually scrolled back in our DMs and it was like August something. 

Heather Sager  4:53  

Yeah. 

Emily Hall  4:53  

We have our on our calendar like our coffee day anniversary and then I think we just forgot about it. We, I think met, I think I replied to one of your stories or something and we started talking about something. We realized that we were really complementary spaces and we live 15 minutes apart, so we're essentially in like next door towns and we had the same go to coffee place, the same place that we went to get out of the house to the office, just as a change of scenery. Super, super cute coffee shop called Lark Cafe in downtown West Linn.

Heather Sager  5:22  

Which is funny I don't think I've told you this but I had only been to that coffee shop a handful of times before and it was to meet another gal I had met online. That was like the first, so there was very much an off chance that that that happened.

Emily Hall  5:35  

Well, it just came together really, like the timing was perfect because at the time I was, I don't even know what I was looking for. I was just like, yeah, people were I mean, at this point, it was summer 2021. We're in well into COVID. Things were opening up and we're looking for, from what you said you were looking for, like meeting people even then you don't didn't normally do that and so the situation where you're like, okay, yeah, let's go, let's go make a friend and we realized that we had very similar backgrounds. We both come from corporate healthcare, both kind of ended up in this online space. I've been here three or four years and we're serving the same audiences just differently. My husband jokes that we built businesses back to back because you focus on speaking and voice and messaging and I focus on the, you know, the content and the design and kind of getting the tech pieces all under control, so essentially, outside the person versus inside the person, and we got together and you just don't feel like click with somebody. I mean, we obviously do, but like, you just, it just works. You're just like you are my people. You can speak the language. We understood, like it just worked from the very beginning, so we became networking buddies after that. And so we'd go to like, as events sort of popping up in Portland, we started going to things together. We wouldn't have to go alone, and it just kind of went from there. I remember last fall, we were talking about different ways to partner or affiliate. We knew that our audiences need each other. We were getting requests from our audiences needing each other, so we're figuring out how to partner, and we kind of never really nailed anything down because it didn't seem like enough, and do you want to tell the story of the the brunch that changed at all over the spring so it went on for quite a few months. 

Heather Sager  7:13  

Yeah, question for you before we get into the brunch, Mimosa question. Was there any point in time when we started chatting? Did you ever have that? Okay, you know how it works, right? When you work on something and you see other people that do similar things to what you do? How we all do this? There's like a tinge of like, do I do it better or like there's like a competitive spirit? Did you ever have that competitive spirit jump up? We've actually haven't talked about this? And did you, did I have ever come up at all? Or were you like, right out of the gate, this is a person I jive with?

Emily Hall  7:49  

No, because we weren't trying to do the same things. If you had said that you were trying to build a presentation design agency, like we would have had a different conversation, but 

Heather Sager  8:04  

because your love would have come off. 

Emily Hall  8:05  

Well, because you were focused on education and at that point, education was not something that I was building my team. I was building the agency, building our capacity. It was just a cool like, oh, that's a really interesting way to apply this and we have such similar approaches to things and similar philosophies. It was just really cool to see that kind of shifted in a way that I had, at that point, no real desire to build on my own. I didn't realize that that was kind of probably planting the seeds for why it works so well. But, I don't know, did you have that? Did you have that moment of?

Heather Sager  8:37  

This is gonna sound weird. These are probably things that I shouldn't say out loud, but we always say the things that we're thinking. I think for a hot minute, like we always have that like kind of like ooh, like, for me, personally, you know, this. I don't do a lot of one on one clients and that's where I think probably you and I would have overlapped, right? So if a client was looking to like, get their webinar audited, or build a keynote presentation, or prep for their conference. If it was a one on one client, we technically would be like direct competitors. And for a hot minute, I remember thinking I was like, well, crap, I don't do slides. I don't even have, y'all you're just gonna laugh at me. I don't even have any deliverables for my clients, like people pay me for my time where we like get the stories out of their head, and we work on their competence, and we craft the stories and we create the outlines and such, but I don't physically do anything. Terrible to say out loud, right? So I think for a hot minute, I was like, oh my gosh, like that got me to question for a minute but what that helped me clarify was doubling down on that separation you talked about where that's what you excel really well in is the you have the agency model. You were doing the done for you design. You had really amazing team. I had me and my assistant, and we did everything at scale. So going all in on my program, which was like group coaching and online education. That was a clear differentiator. So I think for a hot minute I had the tendency that I think we all do, we're around like the comparison and then immediately, I think that difference in business structure quelled that. I don't know. I have really high standards, and I know you do too and that's another reason why we jived a lot. I think a lot of our people listening, we'll jive with this. I think, we all get so, how do I phrase this? We all, I think the people that we work with have really big hearts, and they do really, really high quality work that I think a lot of times competitive comparison and jealousy actually comes from us going like, oh, we want it to be like the best possible for that potential client. So I think, anyways, I think that's where it was coming from, side tangent. Anyways, let's go to the brunch moment. When was the brunch?

Emily Hall  10:43  

The brunch was in, oh we actually did figure this out, April.

Heather Sager  10:48  

Oh, yes. Okay. All right. So if you've been listening for the show for a while, you know that I've done 75 Hard a couple times, which is like that crazy, intense mindset, physical, blah, blah, blah, whatever. All the things we won't get into it. But I remember I had just finished my second round of 75 Hard, which means I had not had sweets, I had not had alcohol, I had not had any like cheesy, delicious, gooey, gooey foods in 75 days, and Emily suggested brunch for our meet up instead of a coffee date, which I'm like, oh, heck yeah. So we met for brunch, it was the end of April of this year. It was April 22, birthday. And we're sitting on a brunch, I got there first and I definitely was like Mimosa all around because I was having a drink, and I don't remember what we were doing. I remember you were telling me about some exciting clients you were working with and you were going off on a tangent in a great way about your ideas for your agency. And I remember we were sitting there and we, I was talking about the program and how things were going with Speak up to Level up and some of the ideas I had for a couple coming affiliate launches, and I think oh, we were chatting around having you come guest teach inside one of the affiliate programs I was doing for Business by Design. And I remember we just pause for a second and randomly so that night before I had been binge watching Netflix, and season two of the Home Edit had just come out so Joanna and Clea were like in my brain, fancy closets I think. I don't remember which re run I was watching. But anyways, I remember sipping champagne and I looked at you and I've said, wouldn't it be cool if we became like the Joanna and Clea of presentation design, and we could like go into people's homes, ie., businesses and clean up all their crap and help them create the most epic messaging that they could pull from over and over again, and they can make all of this work and money, oh my gosh, we can make all of this money, and that came out of my mouth without thinking which is typically how conversations work in my world, and you stared at me and I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen, so from your take what happened next?

Emily Hall  13:04  

My wheels are returning. I am very much in, Heather and I learned this over the last several months. She is an external processor. I'm an internal processor. We figured out ways that we have to communicate in order to help us both be able to process in an effective way, so ya know that trackside a stereo. I also was just fun little detail. I was wearing like a headband, like a classic joint. I had bands like 

Heather Sager  13:28  

Not the giant like, not the giant bow but like, it have like the 

Emily Hall  13:33  

Yeah, yeah. I was intrigued, because at that point, I was probably the updates I'm sharing with you. We, the first two, the first quarter of the year is typically our highest booking of the year because everyone is super excited, like all these big projects they want to execute so we get a ton of bookings and we're booked like four or five months out. So like agency hits capacity the first few, so I was coming off of that and what has happened last few years is that's been a really key point where I've been, I've tried to figure out how to grow, how to scale so that, this is the point where about a team members are added, whatever, expanded our services, done things differently and so I was trying to figure out how to get through this again and so that's probably what we're talking about. So when you said that I think my brain was going to, this could be the way to grow this, to scale this because at that point, we'd had, and several my clients who were interested in your former program, Speak up to Level up. We'd send them your way and I knew that it fit. And so my brain was just like, this could work, like this could be a really, really cool thing. This could be the thing, and I hadn't really thought about that way. And what's interesting, and I told you that since then, is I've had a couple of different speaking coaches over the last four years come up to me and say like, hey, we need to partner on this, hey, we need to partner on this. And it's like, okay, maybe but like I don't quite jive with them or we're not totally aligned on our philosophies or, you know, something's just not, doesn't really, something doesn't sit right. But with us though, it's been so easy and natural and makes sense and I was like, what if we did that? Let's explore. And so I know in that brunch, we had conversations about like, what do you like to do? 

Heather Sager  15:16  

Okay, hold on, I believe the exact thing that you said was you stared at me and you said, yes.

Emily Hall  15:23  

I don't think I said it like that.

Heather Sager  15:27  

It was, and then obviously, there was backup conversation, but it was an immediate groaning, enthusiastic, yes. I'm sorry, that was a monster voice. You did not. 

Emily Hall  15:39  

I don't think it was quite like that but it was, it was, yeah, less creepy.

Heather Sager  15:46  

Less creepy, more excited, and what's funny about it in the whole external processing things. I'm sure y'all have gotten this by now. I say things out loud as I'm thinking them. So in tha, I hadn't put any thought into that. That wasn't something I had been sitting on. It wasn't something like, okay, y'all, I am on human design, which Emily officially got me to actually take a few weeks into this conversation. I'm a manifester, which essentially means I have ideas. I don't run them past other people. I don't think about other people, I just like, I'm like, I'm gonna do something and I go, like, I think and say things out loud and go build. So the idea of working with another person or working for another person was like, nowhere on my radar or even of interest to me. So the fact that that flew out of my mouth was just actually pretty ironic in itself but it did lead into conversation. So let's take it brunch, we like what if for a second played, but then we were both like, no, like, no.

Emily 15:46  

I think we both realize we're like, okay, this would be really cool and we're like, we could like take over the world doing this, like we could do awesome things. But we were very, at that point, like we build a very large successful businesses so it was not a small decision and we recognized, I think that was a bit of a recognized it, where it's like, okay, if we're going to do this, there's going to be a good amount of due diligence that we're gonna have to do both in how our businesses fit together, but also how we work together, how our audiences are going to really making sure that it was going to work kind of on all the levels. And that's really what we spent the next I would say, probably month or two, just having conversations around, was making sure that at all, it worked at all the levels. 

Heather Sager  17:33  

Yeah, you know, one of the one of the things that I'm really we're not gonna go into all the details of all the things, but I remember, we figured out, I think pretty quickly. So we met in person a couple times, right? Where we were having these conversations to brainstorm out, and then we'd go back and think, and then we were like, oh, not really sure. But we had a breakthrough moment, I just want to talk about this for just a moment. You mentioned that you're an internal processor and I'm an external processor. And we've figured it out very quickly, this comes back to one of our core things, which is effective communication was understanding that we think and process and communicate differently, that if we were going to make it work, we had to figure out our style. Do you want to riff on that just a little bit around kind of what we noticed and how we made it work for us?

Emily Hall  18:17  

Yeah, so I, in human design, I am a projector, so I like if anybody knows about that, I like take all the things in and I like, it's the guide. It's the let's do it this way, whatever. There's a whole bunch of stuff in human design. But I very much like take things in and I like my brain puzzle pieces them out. And so it's like, my brain just kind of works to puzzle piece things and then what are the things that I say I have the answer, like, no, I fix this often. And so it was interesting, because we had, like you said, a couple of those in person sessions and you were externally processing in my brain, I was like trying to keep up like, wait 10 minutes ago, we were going this way. What do you mean? Well, and so you were taking my words as external processing and you thought I was just like, riffing and randomly saying things, and I thought that you were saying things that you'd like, genuinely 1,000% meant, and we were like, I don't know what, this is not working, what I don't. What do we go backwards? What is happening? And so I know, that was, I think a Monday, I think we had a conversation on a Wednesday, where it's like, we need to figure out,  something was, something wasn't right, let's figure out what went wrong. And I actually think this is one of our biggest strengths in how we communicate is that we can listen to those kinds of instincts and something, something isn't clicking and we can have very open and honest conversations about it. But what we realized was that we needed to set ourselves up a little bit differently so that you had space to externally process and I had space to process to without the pressure of like a direct in person conversation moment, and we had to kind of get our training wheels a little bit with that. We're a lot better about it now, but especially at the beginning, it took some practice because we weren't used to having to share our ideas with anybody else. We're used to just having them going and doing the thing. We built our businesses on our own. That's that was kind of the, the default mode for so long, so this was it was different in a lot of ways for us, and what we realized was that using a tool like Voxer or voice messaging over text was actually better for us because we could just say all the words, and we could, I could have time to sit in respond. You didn't feel like you were watching me think and wanting to fill the gap with more words, and you could just get all your rambles out and then get to the end and be like, okay, actually, I didn't mean any of this, I think we need to do this instead. And so it gave us both space to process in the way that we need to without putting pressure on the dynamic and so we could get through some of these other communication pieces, get through some of these other decisions, get through these conversations that were necessary at that point without our communication styles getting in the way of that.

Heather Sager  20:44  

Yeah, and I love this. And I'm gonna go on a detour real quick around how this plays out and one of the things that I saw immediately of this being a strength for the new company. The communication style piece, I've always been an external processor. And one of the things that I noticed is when I work with clients, there's been a typically we all attract people that are similar to us, right. So when I think about the clients that I've worked with, the students that I've worked with, I've worked with a lot of external processors but I've also worked with a lot of internal processors. And I've noticed that my style, I can make it work. But one of the really powerful things that I noticed and this is why I think our partnership is so wonderful, is because we have inherently different communication styles. We can help our clients more effectively ideate, come up with their messaging, figure out how they can more effectively talk to their teams and their businesses. So that was something that I saw out of the gate, because that difference in style, my brain clicked, immediately said, Oh, my gosh, this, knowing this piece of just that awareness level between us slash the different skills that we bring, immediately, it's going to help people in this new business, because here's the thing, like, you don't have so many frickin digital courses and programs. The person builds it using their style where they're like, just fill in the blank here, or just put this together here, and then you're left wondering like, okay, but like, well, how, or why. And it's like that processing of like thinking, going into the idea mode and then applying, it's different for each person. So that was like something, this is my side note around, I think we all need to be thinking about that in our business. I mean, I'm not we're not recommending y'all go out and find some partnerships here. But the idea of like, acknowledging that the way you communicate and come up with ideas for things like your clients are going to be operating in different ways. So that's why I think, we came up pretty quickly with some themes around how, like what was central as we built this new brand and The speaker Co like what were the things we really wanted to focus on and the three words that kept coming up our three C's. We're still figuring out how to, like, formally roll this out in our messaging but the three things that kept coming up for us was this idea around full last commitment, so commitment, connection, and communication. So why don't we go there for a moment? We just talked a little bit about communication. You want to riff on that for a moment, Em?

Emily Hall 20:44  

Yeah, yeah, so we actually came up with these, we were standing in the airport in Portland going to Boise for Craft and Commerce. This is a conversation that we had locked into place pretty early on and it really guided a lot of how we have the rest of the transition kind of came together. These became sort of our guiding principles on a lot of things and making sure that they stayed both front and center and how we wanted to build things for our clients, but also in how we operated things on the back end. So that communication, really what we've figured out is that what kind of locked into place was that these these three C's: commit, connect, and communicate, are really infused in everything that each of us does with our clients. There's that both on the internal side of things and on the external side of things. On the internal side, there's really committing to yourself to show up committing, to yourself to be brave, and speak and use your voice in front of other people which can be terrifying. There's that connection and really connecting to your why and your core ideas and connecting to your message, so that you can communicate it in a way that really resonates with people and that that authenticity shows through and then being able to communicate that out. So knowing what words to say, knowing what your body language needs to be, you know that that communication from how you are projecting things. And then externally, it's committing to your your audience, coming to your message, getting your audience to commit to your ideas, connecting your ideas to your audience. So it's really kind of that internal and then how does everything kind of come out and bring your audience along for this journey because that's what every talk is, is you're picking your audience up from somewhere, the beginning of the talk and you're taking them on a journey, it's an experience. It's something that they're, they're wanting an outcome from it. They're wanting something from listening to you from hearing you, from learning from you, and you're their guide, and so being able to help them commit to that journey to connect to what you're sharing and then to be able to communicate what they want afterwards, what they need afterwards, or communicate whatever it is they communicate. But it really kind of came down to these three things were everywhere. They're infused in how you craft your visuals, they're infused with how you craft your story, how you plan your overall talk experience, you know, how you carry yourself on the stage. It was this really cool aha moment, I can actually envision exactly where we were in the airport, we were waiting outside our gate. And we wrote it down because we knew it was important and at that point, we didn't even really fully understand the full depths of it. It took some thought and some brainstorming and just letting it like, marinate for a little bit, to really see how much it truly is infused in everything and we haven't exactly figured out how we want to talk about them. This is really the first time that we're kind of talking about it out loud and publicly outside of the two of us. But it's just, it's such an important, there's such important concepts that are key to being able to be successful on stage and, you know, getting your audience to not really getting your audience to do anything but inviting your audience to connect with you and to engage with you and to act on the thing that you're hoping to inspire them to do.

Heather Sager 23:06  

Yeah, yes. You said that so well. For the first time I was saying things out loud on a quote unquote stage, you did nailed it. Yeah, Okay, I remember on that, I don't remember student the gate talking about it but I remember immediately after when we were on the flight, we were on one of those little tiny planes. I remember it was one of, it was the first time in a very long time that I talked through an entire flight. I am not a flight talker. I am a take out my hearing aids and not talk to anyone kind of person and have quiet time so I remember that. I'm like we knocked out, we like mapped out so many things on that flight on my, I think we were using my remarkable and just like drawing everything out so that was really good. I think, let's actually sidenote, let's talk about that. I just dropped my hearing aids piece. This was something that also was really unique when we were figuring out different connection points that we have. So fun fact, I am a partially deaf speaking coach. So y'all if you are new or listeners on the show, or maybe you're coming from Emily's world, I wear hearing aids. I've worn hearing aids for 15, not quite 15 years, 13 or 14 years. I have a whole podcast episode if you want to hear more about my hearing loss, we'll link about it in there. But a speaking coach teaching people how to use their voice, but I ironically can't hear. Emily, what's your weird thing?

Emily Hall  26:30  

I am a colorblind presentation designer. So I cannot see colors accurately, which is fun fact why I'm created but I've never did branding because I don't pick colors. But what it makes me really good at is, so technically I'm color deficient so my dad's colorblind, my mom's dad is colorblind. So it was genetically it was very, very likely that it's going to happen. But I don't see colors as brightly as other people do. So everything in my world is just a little less saturated. What that does is it actually makes me a built in contrast tester for presentations. So I am better at my eyes are essentially designed to be able to see if colors are going to work well together. So when we get any client branding, I can look at the palette and say, okay, these colors will work, these ones won't, because your contrast on you know, if you're doing something virtually and your people are gonna be on a monitor, you don't know what their brightness is going to be, you don't know their settings are going to be here you're doing on stage. If you have a projector, your contrast is going to be way down and you don't want people to not be able to see what you're doing. So it's a whole thing about accessibility, that I've actually been able to turn into a strength but it's funny that we are, should be less able to be successful in what we do but we've really turned them into our strengths.

Heather Sager  28:42  

Yeah, I mean, it's technically speaking on both fronts. They're both invisible disabilities like if and that, let's actually we'll pivot us into talking about some of our guiding principles and values for our company that really are important. And we really encourage that y'all think about how this plays into your world when you're thinking about building community and your business and your audience. But that piece, when we both talked about, so with you with accessibility with slide design and visuals, one of the things that I've always been really hot and bothered around is when it comes to speaking, so many people forget around accessibility for people with hearing. And I think a lot of times it's really easy anymore with virtual speaking people are like, oh, closed captions. Well, here's the funny thing. Y'all, closed captions wasn't even possible on Zoom until there was a huge uproar during the pandemic, where it was like, hello, this is illegal. Like, we need this to be available for more people, which now, sidenote, y'all closed captions available for every version of zoom. You just need to turn it fricking on so that people have access to that. But I think there's a misconception that people just think that oh, only if you're completely deaf, people need to have those things and that's just not true. There are so many millions and millions and millions of people around the world who have hearing deficiencies or they struggle with processing information and the idea of hearing someone speak and trying to keep up with it is difficult. So having access to closed captions, or when you are speaking at a conference, and you're like, oh, I don't need a microphone, I'm a loud talker, or conversely, you raise your hand at a conference, and you shoo away the mic runner and say, Oh, I don't need a microphone. I'm a loud talker. You're totally making it about yourself. I don't care if you're a loud talker or not, you're robbing so many people with the opportunity to engage in your question and keep up with the conversation. So I get heated, I won't go down a tangent about this one anymore. I talked about this other podcast episodes. But what you can hear with this is both Emily and I, because of our experience with invisible disabilities, that people would never know that we have these things. It's actually shaped how not only we operate as humans, but it shaped how we teach. And I think that's something that's really, really unique when we think about helping other people with speaking, having that level of awareness and inclusion is so so important to us. So let's actually weave that into, we have some brand values that we were talking about that are really, really critical. We weave that one into something that we call openness. So you want to talk about, let's go through some of these for a hot minute. Actually, you don't have to start there. What is your favorite one of our core brand values?

Emily Hall  31:21  

My favorite one is simplicity. 

Heather Sager  31:24  

Talk about that, talk about that. 

Emily Hall  31:27 

Yeah, because my memory has tendency to overcomplicate things. I go immediately into the details. So I like the high level, but my brain jumps into like, okay, but how are we gonna make it happen? That's one of the things we balanced really well on each other, but that coming back to simplicity gives me a starting point, which I really appreciate and so it's actually been really, really helpful and really key in how we've been able to build this plane, or as I like to say, we've got, we had two existing planes and we're just merging them midair. But

Heather Sager  31:57  

It's a thing people, that's totally a thing.

Emily Hall  32:00  

New thing. Simplicity is my favorite because it really helps us. It comes down to so many things, you know, and how we want our audiences to show up, how we want to show up, how we want our audiences to experience the brand. We want it to make sense and be easy and feel accessible, and simplicity really comes down to, when we think about how we work with our clients, it's that like, main, what's that main message? What's that core message, which I do this all the time with design and with figuring out the structure of talks. And so being able to take that idea of like, okay, but what's the main thing? What's the thing? What's the thing that goes on the billboard? And being able to do that over and over again in our business really get to the heart of it, is something that I really value and really love being able to do together? Because we can figure out what is simplicity for us? What is simplicity for The Speaker Co, and let that be, a kind of a guide forward.

Heather Sager  32:55  

Yeah, and I think, for me, it also is a really good reminder, I think a lot of times in this online business space as business owners, we have the constant need to reinvent. We also want to learn and absorb and be around all the other business owners, which means our brain is always going a mile a minute with all these ideas. And it's really easy to get swept up in the different program ideas, or offer ideas, or tactic ideas and frogger hopping from one thing to the next, trying to figure out all the things around how you can best show up, share your message, help people. It's all in good intentions, but at the end of the day, when we're thinking about all those things that we don't have the discipline to say but like, what's the one thing that's gonna make the biggest difference? That I think is actually one of the hardest things to do as entrepreneurs because we have all the ideas, but it is the biggest needle mover. So I think we're operating with that in our business and literally every single day, I swear we have one of those moments of going like, okay, we need to apply this simplicity rule, like we're overcomplicating this, like, how do we boil it down? And the answer always becomes super clear when we ask that question. So, okay, simplicity is the first one. Our second main value, which I think is one of the most important which is we have fun. But we'll kind of blend that in and say what we wanted to do was when we, I think one of the things that really aligned us that we wanted to double down on when we started our brand together was our brand being authentic and real and being something that people wanted to be around. So let me hear your take on that for a moment, and then I'll riff.

Emily Hall  34:36  

Yeah, I'm also curious to hear yours on this. So I, it's so funny because we have such different approaches to how the like, how we face the world and how our brands face the world. So I built E+M Creative side, I don't super love marketing. It's not my jam. So I built it based on referrals and it was great and it was, you know, big company, team all that, but I built it so that I like me feeling authentic and real is being able to connect with clients and be able to have those more personal conversations, not just like speak to the world where we're very much the opposite that way, I think. And so to me, it's that whatever authentic and real feels for you as an individual. Figure out what that is and double triple down on that because that's where you're going to feel the most aligned, that's where you're going to, you know, go down the journey that you're supposed to go down, you're gonna find the people that you're supposed to find that connect with who that person is, whoever that is. If I had tried to be you, there's no way I would have been successful and vice versa because we didn't feel right. But as being able to come together, is we can kind of bring both sides of that. But it's it's so hard when you are in, especially in the online business world where it's similar to that simplicity problem where you get, you know, there's a new thing over here and Oh, shiny over here, or a new tactic here, or this new thing, new platform that you're supposed to be on over here. But figuring out which ones of those actually make sense for you, which ones feel right for you as a human, that's where the magic happens, and so that's what that value means to me for both us and for our clients.

Heather Sager  36:20  

Yeah, I think the, we both cringed because the word authenticity is so overused. It actually is kind of counter effective, but it was was the best word to really think about. But the thing that immediately comes to mind for me, when I think authenticity is, you probably have this happen with your clients in the past few. Someone will come into a, like a coaching session or something and they'll have like, they'll deliver the thing that they want to practice and you notice immediately their body language changes, their facial expressions change. I liken it to, I don't know if your mom had this growing up, but my mom could be like screaming bloody murder at me and my siblings, and then the phone would ring and she would answer the phone and she would go into, Hello, this is Clara, like moms like have nailed down like that, outward facing telephone voice. 

Emily Hall  37:18  

Yep. 

Heather Sager  37:18  

I think every business owner has a version of that, where they will be like laughing shooting the shit before whatever call and then it goes time to practice and then they go, Okay, here we go with tha, and it's like the whole thing changes. And one of the things that I have learned, and I've talked about this on the show before is helping people understand like, Okay, how would you say it if you were three margaritas deep, or how would you say that to a friend or like, tell me what you're trying to say? And that's when somebody goes into like explaining what they were trying to say and start talking like a normal person and using the weird ad lib or the kind of crazy phrasing, all of the sudden you lean in and you're more interested because you're like, that's you. So I think the same thing is true like for us as we build the business slash when we think about who we want to work with and just thinking about things in general is helping people unlock that like realness, and we don't mean like, casual, like, you have to show up all the time, totally disheveled. That's not really authenticity, unless that's how you look all the time and you want to do that. But authenticity is more of like talking as a real human and connecting people in a real way because I think, especially in marketing, people are craving that more than ever, and again, it's not about being super casual. It's just using language and vocal tone and visuals that are like Oh, I'm talking to a real human, not a Canva produced polished version, outsourced to a copywriter, which we love copywriters. We leverage copywriters, right? But you know, you know what I mean with that. 

Emily Hall  38:53  

And I think there's also this, there's kind of the two ends of the spectrum. There's the like, phone voice, and then there's the like, show up in your pajamas. And the answer is not necessarily either because you can show up and be more relaxed and that's your brand. If that's your vibe, that's great, but you also still need to have some sort of strategy in it. And I think that is where that that authenticity has to show up as you're still running a business. You're still you still have goals that you're trying to reach. And so figuring out, that's so hard to do. It's so hard to you're like, you know whenI'm relaxed, I'm good. I'm chillin. This is my vibe, this is how I do it. But figuring out how to weave that into what's going to drive results is is tricky. It's tough. But once you find that lane and once you figure out what it feels like it can come back to over and over again, we can't imagine doing it another way.

Heather Sager  39:47  

Okay, I don't know why but the metaphor that just came to mind for me, I'm like, I need a food metaphor. But okay, what I think about is okay, six food trucks, for example. Okay, like a good food truck. We have a lot of food trucks here in Portland. 

Emily Hall  40:00  

Yes.

Heather Sager  40:00  

We're big fans. A food truck, the ones that do really, really well, the food is so freakin delicious they could sell it for really expensive amount of mony in a restaurant and be very, very successful. But they choose to put it in a fricking truck and sell it on the side of the road, probably still for a lot of money. I mean, food trucks are really high priced. But the package, but like the substance of it is so freakin good, and I think that's what came to mind as you were talking about that, so there's has to be a strategy around it. But the substance of what we talk about, what we speak, our content, it has to be like high dining level quality that's like craveable and delicious and people want it. But the package, you can think about. If you want to show up more of as a food truck, if you want to show up more as like a fine dining restaurant, if you want to show up as a strip mall thing, all of those can be very successful five star Yelp reviewed restaurants. But they just serve different people with different personalities and different vibes, but the non negotiable is the frickin food has to be delicious, so there we go. There's a metaphor, we're gonna have to use that somewhere in our content.

Emily Hall  41:06  

I love that. I love that so much. 

Heather Sager  41:08  

Okay, so that goes with last couple core values. One of them is an intentionality, I think we hit on that. You got to be really intentional in your message. But just everything we do, I think it's just really easy to people get swept away and other people's priorities and I think as business owners, we have to be rooted in that. But let's, I want to go into these last two. The openness, I think this is one that is super, super important, especially going into a business partnership. This was like a fundamental for us. So openness is one of our core values and we look at it in two ways. One, openness to new ideas, and openness to like, a whole lot of things open. I want you to elaborate on that. But also openness to like, we have an open room for people, like everyone is welcome in our room as long as they are here with the same heart, right, and have similar values, and so like inclusion is super important to us. So I'm curious, openness, we haven't talked a lot about that one but what comes to mind for you?

Emily Hall  42:07  

Yeah, like you said, it's kind of a two, there's the openness in kind of how we run things because we bring different experiences, different ideas, different, sometimes different preferences to the table. So being open to having those conversations and hearing the other person out and really reevaluating our own ideas, our own beliefs, our own kind of decisions that we've made before, maybe there's a better way to do it, or a different way to do it, that works better here. So being open to that just in how we happen and how our kind of interpersonal communication works has been really, really key for the success of this. But then the openness, really, I think when we added this, it was primarily around that inclusion and that accessibility, and we want everyone to feel like they take up the same space. You know, it's what we do is for everyone. It can help everyone, it does help everyone. And making sure that that is communicated in all ways, in every step of the way. So we want people to feel like they're invited and want them to feel welcome when they're there and feel welcome to come back when they leave. And so it's really just making sure that there is a space for everyone, and that everyone feels like they've got that space, if that makes sense.

Heather Sager  43:24  

Yeah, it does. I think, it's interesting. I never thought that, I even know how to phrase this. Accessibility, and always thinking about people's comfort and their ability to participate in training sessions. That's just always been ingrained, like in how I operate because the hearing loss same thing for you, right? So it's like a duh moment of it, having that as a value slash making it something that we outwardly talk about a lot, it makes perfect sense because it's the thing. It is like when you when you live with a different way of operating and you adjust how you show up, how you communicate, how you interact. It's so obvious for you, but we sometimes forget about that we need to like outwardly teach that to other people, and so I'm actually really excited about that a lot more. In fact, as we've been sharing our stories and talking to people we've actually started getting people asking us to come talk about accessibility when it comes to presentation, so I'm excited about that. I'm most excited though about our last core value. I may have shoved this one on our list but I feel like we jive really well on it is the current screensaver on the back of my phone, and that is we always go full ass, so let's talk about that. Full ass goes, essentially, it means we don't half assed things. We go full ass, which is a complete and total commitment, which I think is exemplified by the fact that we have this business idea on April 22, and fully disintegrated our brands and launched a brand new brand on August 8. Y'all that's like a three month run there which is seems wild to say, but it makes perfect sense and I think a lot of that is is because we originally decided like, oh, well, this will try out, like doing a program launch together. And we very quickly decided that in order for us to truly serve our audiences and help people get their message out, double down on it, like we're gonna go full ass on this and make it happen, so it's not just about full last about our company. But it's the idea that when people, when we do something like success is determined by your level of full asness will quote that one somewhere, but really, I think about this with like, launches, for example. So people who sell on their business, which is probably all of you listening, how many times I hear business owners go, like, I hope my launch goes well, or I'm think I'm gonna try this. And they use the word I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try some things out. And I always say like, if you try something, you either do it or you don't like, the trying thing, it just doesn't happen. Who does says that? Is that a Yoda thing? Somebody says that. I think it's in a Star Wars movie? I have no idea, maybe it's not. I don't know. 

Emily Hall  46:23  

It is a quote.

Heather Sager  46:25  

I don't, yeah, anyways, so y'all know what I'm saying slash it is the commitment of the year. I'm curious, your take Emily, what what does that meant for you?

Emily Hall  46:35  

Yeah, this actually has been, it's been really interesting because one, it's just how we approach things but it's also been a really interesting decision making metric for us. So we have a lot of ideas, they're not all great but a lot of them are. Like, we have a lot of ideas that we have been, you know, sitting on ourselves for the last few years and now it's like, oh, this is the perfect time to that thing I've always wanted. So we've got this big, big pool of ideas. We cannot to do all of them at once. We should not do all of them at once. And so we've been kind of able to use this value of going full ass as a, okay, can we go full last on this right now? What's our priority? If not, that's fine. We'll just push this down, and it's a thing for three months from now. So it's helped us to be able to not lose our minds in how much we're deciding to do because we want to do a lot of things, but very big plans for the coming years. And being able to get there is a marathon that sometimes feels like a sprint, but it is a marathon. And so it's been able, it's helped us kind of figure out what those segments are, what are those pieces and so we can focus on going philosophy to each thing, and not split our attention. So really, it's been something that, it's that commitment to, yeah, dissolving our businesses, in doing this, and really, I mean, beyond just the fact that it's something that our students need, our clients need. We just want it too like, we got into it, and we're like, I don't want to do it another way. This is the way that we want to do it. We commit to each other that we're going to do this but it's really been a tool for how we've been able to navigate the transition and how we're going to navigate rolling out things in the future as figuring out what we can really, really commit our attention to and what we want to commit our attention to.

Heather Sager  48:24  

Yeah, I love that. That prioritization piece that has been huge because I think this asking you that question is can we fully like, can we fully commit to this? And if there's any hesitation, it's a no. It's a no or not right now, so I love it. That's been really helpful, especially with my idea brain. I have ideas all the time. I only send about 30% to you via Voxer. So I hold some in, I hold some in. I try to filter. Okay, let's talk about what this philosophy is. I want to round out this conversation with y'all. By the way, I hope this has really been helpful. I know, I love listening to podcast episodes, I'm always thinking like, what do I like to listen to? I like to listen to just casual conversations from other business owners. I'm always very curious around how other business owners are thinking, like, what's on their mind, what do they create? So if you all are loving this, by the way, we come hang out with us on Instagram. You're gonna giggle. Both of us had built our brands and our businesses and now we're starting this new one and so I giggle because I'm like, look at us, starting at zero followers on Instagram, look at us having humble beginnings. So we have like 120 followers on Instagram. Look, our cute little account we're growing. 

Emily Hall  49:35  

We did celebrate when we hit triple digits. 

Heather Sager  49:37  

We did a little Voxer little cheers celebration, but come follow us along on there and honestly send us a direct message Emily and I are managing all of our own social media accounts. But send us a message and let us know what's resonating with you in this conversation or just if you have curiosities, send them over our way we'd love to connect with you. But let's wrap up this conversation talking about kind of what's next and what to expect? So, The Speaker Co, that made me laugh a little bit. When we met with our lawyer to talk through this, he looked at us like, we were crazy. He's like, you're gonna call it The Speaker Co, like, Co and, like company. So he's like, so it's gonna be The speaker company. We're like, no, it's Speaker Co. 

Emily Hall  50:20  

It was a real conversation. We do this a couple of times.

Heather Sager  50:22  

I was cited for that. But okay, so with The Speaker Co, we have three like primary lanes and we wanted to kind of tease those out for y'all, so you have an idea of what to expect slash if you have questions reach out to it. But our three main legs are, we have online education. So just formal, I know I've teased at this over the last couple of months. But y'all my programs Speak up to Level up that I've been running for three years. It's like my prized possession. I love it. It was my baby child made the difficult decision to sunset that program. And I think it's one of those beautiful sayings that you have, sometimes you have to, sometimes you have to end something beautiful to create space for something even more amazing and that's where we're at right now. So my existing programs and such are all sunset, and we are going to be building programs together under this new brand. So one, online education. We'll talk more about that in here in a moment. Two, super freakin stoked for this, something called our Speaker Studio, which essentially is our creative agency, where we do done for you work with your slides and all those things and we will talk about that. And then third, I can't pick a favorite, but I'm very excited about this one, it's events. We have a vision of wanting to run conferences, retreats, different style events, whether they're virtual or in person. And both of us have a background in that and they have been instrumental in how we need to build our careers, so we want to create that space too. So online programs, our studio services, and events are essentially the three main legs you can expect from us moving forward. Emily, let's talk a little bit about the Speaker Studio because I know for my audience, they're new to this idea of having access to an agency because as we mentioned at the top of the episode, I didn't do any of that stuff for my clients in the past. So will you share a little bit about our vision for the studio? 

Emily Hall  52:09  

Yeah, so we're really taking a lot of the the core operations that were in E+M creative, and we just kind of migrated them over to The Speaker Co. So it's going to be kind of two lanes within the studio, there's the content side of things. And then the, my gosh, words, the design side of things. The content side of things is really that content consulting, so working on webinars, and signature talks, and stage, whatever, anytime you're on a stage helping build that, and then inE+M creative, we did a lot of course development and building programs. So we'll be rolling that out here in a bit as well, but really, we're focused on those those talks. We're in, you know, it's all conference season right now, and so really focused on helping our clients through all of that on the content development side. And that's layering and storytelling, figuring out your hook, making sure that you know, you're creating a good journey, that it's strategic, that you're getting the results that you're wanting to get at the end of it, and then there is the design side of it. So we have our design team. They are fabulously talented and we do slide design in there. Yep, they're all migrated over to The Speaker Co. We're operating out of that. And so we're taking actually, we're really excited, we're like able to kind of level up a lot of the things that I wanted to do before, but shifting over gives us kind of a clean slate to optimize so many things. And so we do slide design in pretty much any software. Primarily our clients want Canva, PowerPoint, Keynote. We also do media kits, and workbooks, and all the things that go with a talk. You know, it's never just a slide deck. It's all the things that go with it so we do all of that. I'm really excited. It's gonna be awesome. We're able, got some really, really incredible plans to scale some different ways that we're going to be offering services for new clients coming in the door and the ways to serve our clients that just needs small kind of like onesie, twosie things as they use their talks as they grow, as they expand, so we're very, very excited about that. And it's going to be really easy to be able to bounce between our education and our studio and that's one of the things that we're most excited about is it's all, it's all under one umbrella. It's going to be really cohesive in the methodologies that we apply and the language that we all speak, you know, it's all going to be it's all going to be standardized solely based on best practices in it all is based on best practices in the communication space, and so we are very, very excited for that.

Heather Sager  54:25  

This is going to be so good. I think a couple things that come to mind when in this online marketing space, right, having a business, having a brand. I think a lot of people think that okay, I have Canva. I can make things pretty. There's actually, this is what I love about your experience and expertise, this is not mine. There's actually a science behind how to create visuals for education both with speaking, for online education with all those things. And this is what's interesting is I've been able to get by and I have a background in photography and design, which is why I can make slides but the actual science behind slides being able to put those together for people. I am like freaking crazy town bananas excited over it. I've already had so many people are like, oh, man, like, can you do my workbooks for my course or can you do this? So y'all just a heads up, we're already booked out through most of October for the studio. So if you are interested, you can head over to thespeakerco.com. If you just go to our contact page, just send an inquiry over so you can get on Emily's calendar to talk with us. It's so, so good. I'm very excited about the Studio. So, but the most pressing thing that's coming up is our new program. So we're not going to go into a ton of detail on this, y'all because we are officially launching our first combined program under The Speaker co. It's going to be called The Speaker Society. That officially is opening. We just clarified the doors open on September 27, so you can expect all of that. We're going to be doing some webinars that week and we'll be telling you all about it. But we're also going to be doing a sales based webinar, meaning we're gonna teach you how to non schmuckily sell from the stage and sell off stage, so you guys can expect all of that will be coming up. We'll get you all the info just keep listening to the show, or it actually depends on when you're listening to this. The registration for that might already be up. But Emily, can you just give a little like hintsy hintsy around what is The Speaker Society and what people might be like, who this might be for? 

Emily Hall  56:25  

Yeah, so The Speaker Society is I'm so like, this is our baby. It really is taking the the best and the strongest of everything that you and I do and bringing it together into one really cohesive learning experience. So it's a combination of the core curriculum, a community and tons of other resources, but really guiding people through the process of figuring out what your core messaging is, figuring out how to curate that into something that is effective. It's based in all the sciency things I've talked about. But we take the science will make it fun and easy and approachable, and like we have a whole system around it that we've been using. And so we teach that, how to navigate that system, how to build your talk, or any talk so that it works that it resonates, and then how to build all the pieces for it. So going into, one of the best practices around visuals, and again, how to make it easy, we don't give you the kitchen sink. We give you everything that you need to be successful and nothing more. And like Heather mentioned earlier, she and I have different like, because we have different ways of processing things. And so we've built this so that there are different ways to implement, you know, there's this whole thing with some people jumped into kind of creative type tasks more easily and some jump into analytical tasks a little bit easier. So we offer different ways to implement depending on how you're feeling that day, how you kind of default into things so that if you try implementing something and you get stuck, there's another option. That's not the only thing. It's not this one weird fill in the blank thing that you're stuck with. And you're like, Okay, I guess that's it. We give really, really robust tools to be able to implement and get a lot of success. And so it's building everything so that it's easy, and it's I'm so excited. And then the kind of the last piece of it is really taking it and running with it. So how do you take this? And how do you turn your talk into a really strong, customizable, repeatable tool for yourself to see growth, whether that growth is leads or sales or visibility or just credibility in your space, whatever your goals are for that. So that was very eye level. I don't know if you have another another kind of angle that I missed there but

Heather Sager  58:36  

No, it's great. I think the biggest thing is, this is for you as a business owner, right? If you want to reach more of your clients, and you want to make sure that when you're talking about your expertise, you're talking about in a way that's actually going to help you make sales and serve your audience at the same time. I think one of the things when we were brainstorming around how we want to ensure what we teach is different. There is common knowledge right now in the industry that there are certain ways that you're supposed to layer your message in a launch to get people to buy. There's an actual script your quote unquote supposed to use on a webinar, there is a direct stack, your pitch deck to sell from the stage. And one of the things that we've really heard a lot from people, especially in a lot of conversations we've had in the last couple of months is people are kind of annoyed that they have to follow the quote unquote best practices, but they do it anyways because they think that that's how you actually grow an online business. And it's just, it's not true. It was not true. So whether or not you actually want to sell from the stage or you have digital courses or you just want to get really good at talking about your expertise and getting your audiences to take action, our program essentially is going to help you build a talk that helps you and your audience get results and then how to actually take that and get in front of the right audiences so you can grow whatever it is. If you have digital courses, if you have group coaching programs, if you have online services, whatever it is that you have. Your talk becomes part of your sales vehicle to make all those things possible, so it's going to be good. I love what you said around the idea that if people get stuck, it's not just a fill in the blank model. I think that's another one. Coming back to our principles and philosophies, I think one of the beefs a lot of people have with digital courses and programs is people give you the toolkit based on what worked for them, and one of the advantages in The Society is you're getting both of our expertise and our team with that whole coming from different communication styles and perspectives so that you won't get stuck and you're able to not only get your message out, but then you can do the same for your audience and help your audience get through their different communication styles. I'm excited about that. Go ahead. 

Emily Hall  1:00:46  

And it's not based on your results or my results. It's based on communication science and behavior change psychology, like it's based in science and data, and then we take it, we apply it into the online space and that's what we've both been using, we realized. And so we have taken that and so we technically have use it, but it's based in our backgrounds in doing this for a living and for other people and being able to take those, you know, industry best practices into this space that has, is craving it, so we're excited. We're excited to share this with you because it's going to be, it's gonna be so good.

Heather Sager  1:01:26  

We're going to be like partying up all month of October with our new members inside the program. So y'all, if you're listening, if you're intrigued,. You can just head over to thespeakerco.com, that's where you can get more information about everything we talked about today. You can read a little bit more up on our story slash our services, you can join the waitlist for The Society, or if you're listening to this while it's open, you can jump us and join us inside, jump us and join us inside. Yep, that's what I said. Last thing I'll mention because this is just very, very time sensitive. We are gonna be doing events as a company. So I'm just gonna do a little picky here. If you have any interest in being around other entrepreneurs to get out of your normal daily routine and you're just feeling like this, you need a kick in the pants to get to your next level, you're interested in doing more speaking, or at least getting your message out there and you want to be around more people so that becomes more likely for you. We have our first ever live event coming up the Boujee Biz Retreat. It's in October, depending on when you're listening to this, it might be sold out. So I'm just gonna recommend just send us a direct message on Instagram and we'll have a conversation and get you all the info, see if we can sneak it in but that's happening real soon. So if you want to get into a live event, it's happening October 21 and 22nd in Phoenix, Arizona. We would love to meet you in real life and help you get to the next level in your business by unlocking some of those things when it comes to speaking visibility in the head junk. So with that, I feel like we've talked for a while that I think people are going to be either love us or hate us, and if you hate us don't leave a review and just we'll see it never. Emily, let's leave it with this. What are you feeling most excited about moving forward?

Emily Hall  1:03:09  

I am most excited about The society, actually. That's what I'm most excited about. It's been this was one of the very first ideas that we had, and it's been in the works for so long that I'm excited for it to be out in the world. What about you? 

Heather Sager  1:03:26  

Yeah, me too. I'm excited about that. Can I sneak peek share our idea from yesterday around calls?

Emily Hall  1:03:38  

Yeah, our, like idea that's less than 24 hours ago?

Heather Sager  1:03:41  

Okay. Full disclaimer, we have every right to change this idea. Okay, but we're gonna give you, dear listener, first sneak peek at our ideation. We were sitting yesterday, we went to Lark Cafe, our favorite coffee shop, and we were talking about finalizing the details of what's included in The Society beyond the curriculum. And one of the things we were talking about is, you know, in a lot of online programs people do quote unquote, hotseat calls or coaching calls, and some programs found a coach that can be fire, but a lot of times they just become very routine and they kind of lose their luster in their effectiveness, or they're always filled with like brand new people in the program. So Emily and I came up with this amazing idea that one of the best parts about being in a group program is being able to get ideas from other people. But sometimes, I mean, it's kind of like a hit or miss of who's in the room. So one of the cool things that we're going to do in The Society is you actually get live coaching and feedback on your content. Like we will review your stuff, help you come up with your stories, all those things. You'll get that live coaching and feedback. But we're also doing something called the Ramble room, which is leveraging breakouts, where on our coaching calls, we'll do coaching and then you'll actually go out into breakout rooms to model what you just learned. You'll actually ramble on out your ideas on all the calls, which might sound terrifying, but trust me, you're gonna love it but you ramble it out loud so you can start knocking these ideas out of your head to test how they sound, because that's how you become a better articulator of your message. So our calls are going to be really interesting, because it's not just going to be a ask, Heather, I got questions and we ramble for an hour. It'll actually be, here's real feedback on your content, and then you get to talk it out with other business owners, test out your messaging, test out that articulation and it's gonna be a game changer. So I'm really excited about having that just a different way to approach live calls because I think we need a little bit of a shake up in how programs are run.

Emily Hall  1:05:41  

Yeah, yeah, well, and one of the things that we've talked about, it's been really actually key in us being able to move so quickly and how we've done this, but being able to talk out our ideas, we, what is our saying that there's, there's a gift to get through the garbage to get to the gold. 

Heather Sager  1:05:55  

Yeah. 

Emily Hall  1:05:56  

Very few of our ideas are fully baked the first time we say them out loud, and that's the same is true of our clients. And so once it really kind of got to that we're really wanted to create a space for that to be able to have that be part of the program in a way that still felt supported, so you're not just like talking into anything and hoping for the best, but really having a structured way to give and get feedback. It's really, really important and so we really want to develop that. And so yeah, our deal yesterday was to weave that into the coaching calls and restructure the call so that they are driven by purpose.

Heather Sager  1:06:30  

Yeah. Okay. I love that. I'm so excited. I cannot imagine doing this wild thing we're doing with any other person. I am so grateful for you and I'm so excited for the cool shit we're building, and I'm so excited for our listeners for the cool shit we're building. We're gonna have so much fun. Thank you. Thanks for coming on, Em, and she'll be on the show again. So we'll just ask the question. I posted on Instagram some questions which we've answered most of them today that came in. One of the questions we got from someone on Instagram was Heather, what's going on with the podcast? Like, what's that going to look like? No change, y'all. We're still going to be having the same Heather ramble conversations interviews every single week. What will be different is you'll probably hear from Emily now and then I'll be like, hey, Em, come on the show and talk to me about this thing. So she'll be a reoccurring guest on the show, but we're going to continue serving you as we as we do. And what you'll notice is the podcast is now housed on our new website, thespeakerco.com/podcast. So that's where you can access all the show notes and get all the great resources we talked about today. But we can't wait, thanks for celebrating with us and come send us a message on Instagram and tell us what you think. I don't think we're supposed to say that but I really am curious, like, would you come just like go on our Instagram stories and just be like, Hey, we're so excited. It's like a little mini house opening party. 

Emily Hall  1:07:48  

That sounds good. 

Heather Sager  1:07:50  

Alright guys, we'll see you on the next episode.