From shining shoes for $2 at age 7 to starting an online education company at age of 22, people are drawn to the young speaker from Dallas, TX, Kyle Dendy.
Nationwide Speaking Tours
After graduating from high school in 2016, Kyle began traveling the country speaking in schools, churches and organizations. As more opportunities came his way and he documented the journey on his Instagram and Facebook, he said people were curious to know more about him. He started sharing tips via DMs or over a phone call, then he decided to start an online program. "I was sitting in my room one day, and I had this idea to turn all I was being asked about into an online program people could access on demand. I decided on the name Speaker Secrets."
Starting from Scratch
In the 1.0 version of the program which launched in September 2019, Kyle sat in the kitchen and recorded his screen as he showed people the basics of landing speaking gigs. He showed them how to find decision-makers and what they should say in order to land gigs at TEDx events, schools, etc. "Admittedly, the first version of the program was not that sharp," he said. "The value was there, but the excellence wasn't where I wanted it to be. I threw it together because I didn't expect a small amount of people to join, but as the program grew, it became evident that I needed to reshoot the content and make it phenomenal."
While in his hotel room in St. Louis on a TEDx speaking trip, he recreated every video. He says the course exploded after that. According to him, more than 7,000 people have paid to join the program from all around the world.
Automating the Process
Thinking like an entrepreneur, he put systems in place to get students the best results with the least amount of friction. "You can get started on your own, but you need systems if you want to scale. What may take hours of your day and half of your energy to do manually, a system or automation might be able to get the task done in an instant," he said.
