The NEW SpeakersU Podcast

Hi there. It’s James Taylor here, keynote speaker and founder of SpeakersU welcome! This episode is a little bit unusual, I want to kind of bring you in backstage to what we’re doing here at SpeakersU, because you’re going to start noticing a few differences, a few changes, they’re going to be coming up. 

What we cover:

• Speakers Life Podcast

• New Things

• Supporting Other Speakers

• The NEW SpeakersU Podcast

Speakers Life Podcast

Now, this show the Speakers Life Podcast with James Taylor. We’ve been doing it for about two years now. And it’s been great fun doing the show. Essentially, the show started because I wanted to share my experiences and my conversations, I was having some things in green rooms backstages, for going on speaking on stages with other speakers, I wanted to share that with you. And we’ve had some phenomenal guests over the past few years as well. In addition to that, sometimes, if I would be away speaking in different countries, I would record episodes on the road, and these little solo episodes, and a lot of you really enjoyed these solo episodes, many of them cover a little bit more of the craft and lifestyle of being an international speaker as well. 

New Things

Now, a couple of things changed. First of all, we started getting very busy, we got lots of new members into our SpeakersU Program our membership program, which was fantastic. And we really started seeing a big growth in 2019. And in 2020 happened with a global pandemic. And I had to make a decision at that point. Because a lot of our members, our speakers, you members, frankly, they were really hurting. they’d seen many of their speaking engagements canceled or postponed for the future year. And they were just trying to get their heads around what was going on. Now, the some of them thankfully, they listened to I spoken about previously about creating an all weather speaking business. And so they had other revenue streams in their speaking business, they had, perhaps had online courses, training, memberships, coaching, consulting, they had other things. So they will find that we’re able to kind of use this time to, to maybe kind of reconstruct how they wanted to do this speaking, others move, really to virtual speaking. And that was great. 

We worked with lots of our speakers, your members on helping them make that transition to virtual, how it’s something I was noticing is that they needed more of my time our members, because they were going through these challenges. And so I had to make a little bit of a decision. And this I decided really in 2020, that I wouldn’t create any new podcast episodes for the Speakers Life, because I just wanted to spend time focusing on our members and helping our members. And that was an interesting experience basically deciding not to do I’m so used to every week coming on here and interviewing someone or doing a solo podcast episode. But it was useful in that allowed me to kind of rethink about what we wanted to do with the show as well. Now, in that time, we didn’t not put anything out, we actually took some of our previous episodes that we had for some of our online summits. And we use those and repurpose those, but it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t that, you know, ideal. But I just felt I really wanted to spend time with our speakers, you members, that was my my focus in 2020, really helping them and supporting them through what was a very difficult time. 

But now we’re seeing them really kind of reconfiguring their businesses, they’ve rethought about their various revenue streams, many of them added new revenue streams, whether that’s from virtual speaking or virtual emceeing or creating online courses, online memberships. And now I thought it’s time to start the podcast again. But I wanted to make some changes. One was a one was a branding change, frankly, you know, the Speakers Life it came about because I have another show called the creative life. And it was I just kind of took that similar title and I just related to speaking and it was fine. the speaker’s life was, was great. 

Supporting Other Speakers

But why was finding it in terms of the research is, instead of just speaking to other speakers, what many listeners really enjoyed was me having conversations with, often what we call service providers of people to work with speakers help support speakers, so that could be people that help them with their SEO, their online marketing, helping them creating their courses, their branding, people work speaker bureaus, we didn’t want to just hear from other speakers, we wanted to hear people to serve speakers and, and to that the speakers like it didn’t make as much sense as a title anymore. 

The NEW SpeakersU Podcast

So what I decided to do, really at the beginning of the year, my team and I, we had a few long conversations about it. We’ve actually changed we’re changing the name now you’ll notice this from the speaker’s life with James Taylor to the SpeakersU Podcast, and that puts it in total alignment with SpeakersU website as big as your membership program as well. Alongside this, we’re also going to be launching the SpeakersUTV, which we did actually have. We kind of did a few episodes of that in 2019. And we’re going to really be amplifying that now as well. So everything is now in alignment. We have two SpeakersU websites because of your membership program we have the basics and the pro membership. We have the SpeakersUTV episodes which are every week as well. We are the speakers, you podcast episodes. 

Every week, I’m going to be bringing you a new episode usually with a guest, someone who can help you provide you with an idea, information, strategies, techniques, tactics, to help you grow your speaking business. That’s, that’s the idea. So that’s the speakers life is now the SpeakersU Sodcast. 

Having settled that, the good thing is you don’t have to change anything, we’re staying on the same platforms, you don’t have to re subscribe to anything, you’re good there. If you are listening to this for the first time and you are not subscribed, then you can subscribe to the SpeakersU podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Now, regardless of whether you’re new to this show, or whether you’ve been listening for a while, we would really appreciate you to do is wherever you listen to your podcasts, go in there, make sure you’re subscribed, leave us a review. I really appreciate it also helps with the algorithm to them, share it with other speakers, perhaps interested in learning about some of these topics as well. 

So that’s it. That’s the new episode of a new season that we’re going into 2021 this is now the SpeakersU podcast. And if you have ideas for future episodes, or maybe potential guests that you’d like us to have on, just feel free to reach out to our team at hello@SpeakersU.com We’re always looking for new ideas, maybe there’s someone you have worked with. It’s not that we’re not interviewing other speakers for the show. That’s absolutely not true, we will be bringing in other speakers. But every time I want to make sure they can serve you as a listener. And they’re sharing something that’s actionable that you can use and apply in your own speaking business. 

So if you are a speaker, and you’ve been going through these past 12 months, and you’ve tried something, a new strategy, a technique way of thinking we’re doing something and it’s really helped you grow your speaking business, then we absolutely want to hear from you and we’d love to have you on to talk about that and share that with the audience. 

So onto a new journey. Thanks for joining us thanks for staying with us as well. If you haven’t been to the SpeakersU website as well head over there. We’ve got lots of great free training we’ve added if you’re not already a SpeakersU member, basic or pro member then you can also find out about their all the information here as well. My name is James Taylor, and this is the SpeakersU podcast.