What does it look like to scale your business? The task can seem overwhelming or impossible. Our guest in this episode shares his journey from being a one-man show to scaling his speaking business beyond himself.
Houston Kraft is a professional speaker, and kindness advocate who speaks at schools, conferences, and events internationally. He the author of Deep Kindness and the co-founder of CharacterStrong: an organization dedicated to creating trainings and curriculums that cultivate a more compassionate culture.
HIS STORY
With a background in student council and high school theatre, Houston was drawn to storytelling from a stage. Houston focused on building old relationships stronger and cultivating new ones. Because of his “relationship equity”, his first year speaking included 13 events at various schools. The next year there were 30 speaking engagements. The year after that 70. Proving that word of mouth truly does travel.
“Once I hit 120 gigs each year for enough years, there was a breaking point, mentally, physically relationally. I decided we had to go another direction. So what does it look like to create boundaries on my time? What does it look like to scale the message beyond myself?”
Enter in CharacterStrong. Partnering with a friend who shared in the desire to make an impact in the school sector they began the project on the side. After a year it became apparent that it could be bigger and they decided to make the shift.
“Now, everything I do, my framework is always, “How does this point towards Characterstrong?” Because if it doesn’t, then I’m not going to make time for it right now, because my only goal is to grow that work that’s so much bigger than me.”
Setting boundaries has been critical for Houston to maintain physical and emotional health. He references The Four Burners Theory and how this changed his thinking about success.
“To point towards something that removes my name, my likeness from the equation, as often as I can. Everything I say yes to now filters through Characterstrong.”
Today’s episode is full of wisdom including insight into working with who/what you know, saying yes to the right things rather than everything and how getting out of your own way can be the key to growing something bigger than you!
Listen in to hear all the details on episode 322 of The Speaker Lab!
THE FINER DETAILS OF THIS SHOW:
- How did he combine his interests and passions to find his speaking path?
- How do you start with what and who you know?
- What’s the best way to find a need you can fulfill for your audiences?
- Why is this business a momentum business?
- What’s the first thing to think about if you want to build a speaking business not dependent on you?
- The importance of boundaries when you’re scaling your speaking business.
- Can you say yes to too many things?
- How your content can shift if you aren’t the only one delivering it.
- And so much more!
