January 13, 2025 • 26 mins
Summary
Austin Armstrong shares his incredible journey from unpaid intern to successful entrepreneur and co-founder of Syllaby IO, a tool designed to simplify video content creation for social media. With 20 years of experience in social media marketing, Austin reveals the challenges he faced along the way, including burnout and the struggles of running an agency. He emphasizes the importance of letting go of control and outsourcing tasks to maintain balance and avoid burnout, a lesson he learned through trial and error. Austin also discusses the evolution of Syllaby IO, highlighting the critical pivot in targeting content creators rather than just business owners, which spurred significant growth for the company. Tune in for a conversation filled with insights on entrepreneurship, overcoming challenges, and the future of AI in content creation.
Key Takeaways
- Faith and Burnout: Balance is key—faith, reflection, and delegation are vital for recovery.
- Perfectionism: It’s a form of procrastination. Taking action is better than waiting for perfection.
- Leveraging AI: Tools like Syllaby.io make content creation faster and more accessible for entrepreneurs.
- Mindset Shift: Small, consistent improvements lead to long-term success.
- Startup Lessons: Pivots and failures are inevitable but offer opportunities for growth.
Show Notes
Jim Burgoon hosts an insightful conversation with Austin Armstrong, a seasoned expert in social media marketing who has transformed his passion into a thriving business. Austin’s journey is a testament to the power of perseverance and adaptability in the face of challenges. Starting from a young age, his exploration of social media began with MySpace, where he quickly learned the ropes of growing an audience and generating income online. This foundational experience paved the way for his later success in the industry, which he recounts with a mix of nostalgia and gratitude for the mentors who guided him along the way.
Throughout the episode, Austin reflects on the demands of entrepreneurship, particularly the emotional roller coaster that comes with running a business. He shares vivid stories of his early days as an intern, the financial struggles he encountered, and the moments of self-doubt that almost derailed his journey. The candid discussion about burnout highlights the importance of self-awareness and the need for a support system. Austin emphasizes the necessity of finding balance in life, whether through hobbies, relationships, or simply taking time off to recharge. He reminds listeners that the path to success is rarely straightforward and that resilience is key to overcoming obstacles.
The conversation shifts toward Austin's latest venture, Syllaby IO, which aims to revolutionize how entrepreneurs create and share video content on social media. He discusses the inception of the tool and the challenges he faced as a non-technical founder in a competitive market. The narrative captures his strategic pivot from focusing on AI avatars to catering to the needs of content creators. This shift has led to remarkable growth for Syllaby, demonstrating Austin’s ability to learn from setbacks and adapt his approach to meet market demands. The episode concludes with Austin's wisdom on embracing imperfection and the importance of taking action, encouraging listeners to pursue their passions with determination and a willingness to learn.
Website mentioned:
Faceless Youtube Tool: https://syllaby.io/?via=jim-burgoon19
** Description contains an affiliate link. You will pay nothing to me, but be directed to the site and sign up under their offer.
Austin Armstrong
Austin Armstrong is a lifelong digital marketer, public...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to Grace and theGrind, the podcast where we dive
deep into the journeys ofheart centered and purpose driven
leaders and entrepreneurs.We'll pull back the curtain to explore
the stories behind success,how people have navigated the toughest
challenges, overcome theirobstacles, and found their way through
the grind to build somethingtruly impactful. Whether you're a
(00:24):
Christian leader looking forguidance or an entrepreneur seeking
inspiration, we're here toequip and encourage you on your journey.
So let's get started and findthe grace within the grind. This
is Grace in the Grind. And nowyour host, Jim Burgoon.
Welcome to Grace in the Grindwhere we're here to empower, to equip,
(00:45):
and to encourage Christians inbusiness and Christian entrepreneurs
to do all that God has calledthem to. And today, a new friend
of mine is on the show, AustinArmstrong from Syllabi IO. Austin,
welcome to the show.
Jim, thank you so much forhaving me on. It's truly an honor
and a privilege and I'mexcited for a fun conversation.
Same here. So why don't we dothis? Let's take the next minute
(01:05):
to really introduce theaudience who you are and what you
do.
Yeah. So I have been doingsocial media marketing for 20 years
now, which is crazy to thinkabout and say, but I was fortunate
enough to find what my callingin life is very early. So When I
was 14 years old, I gotstarted on MySpace and I very quickly
(01:27):
learned how to grow a largefollowing and build little businesses
around that and turn it intomultiple streams of income. And I
really just got addicted tothat process and I've been more or
less doing it ever since. Nowfast forward to about 11 years ago
is where I really started myprofessional journey in this space
(01:47):
in video marketing for socialmedia. I had moved out to California
and I started as an unpaidintern at a video marketing company
that specialized in addictiontreatment marketing and behavioral
health marketing. And I workedmy way up from being an unpaid intern
to a paid intern to a parttime employee to a full time employee.
(02:09):
That led me to working atseveral drug and alcohol treatment
centers and different mentalhealth nonprofits. And then six years
ago I started my first companywith my boss, which was really cool.
At that same company that Iworked my way up in, he was my mentor.
I was also fortunate enough tofind a mentor in life in my early
(02:29):
20s. So I really went fromunpaid intern to business partner.
That was a company calledSocialty Pro where we helped service
based businesses grow onsocial media with a specialty in
short form, video. Within thatsix years, that's where I really
started to grow my personalbrand online. I had a lot of early
success with TikTok and Ileveraged that to grow across every
(02:53):
other major social mediaplatform. I today have about 3 million
followers on social media.Talking about AI and how you can
grow on social media, generateleads and sales for your business,
and develop different streamsof income. Two years ago, I took
all of that knowledge and Iwanted to solve a lot of the problems
(03:16):
that business owners had andcontent creators and entrepreneurs
had that caused them to hire amarketing agency in the first place.
But a problem with that isthat agencies are quite expensive.
And so as a solo founder or anew entrepreneur or a small business,
you need to create content,you need to be consistent, but it's.
(03:37):
You might not have the budgetto hire a marketing agency. And I
just wanted to solve like allof these problems, which led to syllabi.
So Syllabi is really aculmination of my 20 years of experience
on social media, 11 years ofvideo marketing experience, and I
created a tool that lets youfind ideas, create, schedule and
(03:58):
publish videos on social mediaon any topic, in any niche in a matter
of minutes for a very lowaffordable price. And it's been truly
a blessing to see it grow overthe last two years.
Man, what an incrediblejourney from intern to business partner.
Like just skip the wholething, let's.
Just go right for it.
I absolutely love it, man. Sowith that being said, what were some
(04:19):
of your challenges? That's ahuge like obviously 20 years and
you're probably personalfriends with Tom from MySpace. I
remember MySpace.
Yeah, it was my first friend.
Yeah, yeah, my. Thank you, Iremember that. But going from the
unpaid intern to the businesspartner to the all that you're doing
and the massive influencerthat you are. Like, what were some
of those challenges? Likeimposter syndrome, fear? Like what
(04:41):
were some of the things youwere going through?
Yeah, ton, tons of that. ThisI saw the long term vision and I
was quite poor for a long timeas you grow up and hustle, but I
knew that it would eventuallypay off into expertise and it did.
I stuck to that journeybecause I love what I do and I loved
(05:03):
it along the way. I especiallybeing an unpaid intern. But even
just being a part timeemployee, finding the balance of
actually needing to pay billsand feed yourself, there were quite
a few weeks where the groceryshopping was, the Walmart across
the street and. And eating drypackaged noodles and ramen and that's
what I ate. To get by with alot of roommates that were not ideal
(05:27):
situations, but I kept. Keepimproving, keep learning failures
along the way. I would say themost recent struggle that I had was
I got quite burnout in theagency space. It was very difficult
for me to juggle because I'mvery attached to the work that I
(05:47):
do, and I take a lot of pridein the work that I do. And so there
were. Being an entrepreneur asa roller coaster, there are so many
amazing highs, and the lowscan just challenge you to your core.
And so there would be timeswhere, you know, everything's, it's
a great month, we'reprofitable, every, everything's good,
(06:11):
and then all of a sudden, forwhatever reason, you lose a key client
or two clients, and then allof a sudden it's, oh, my gosh, am
I going to be able to makepayroll this week? I can't pay myself
because I need to pay myemployees. You have an employee quit
on the spot because they'regoing through their own struggles
and stuff. And that's happenedat core moments. And so it just.
(06:32):
That roller coaster reallyburned me out. After running that
business for six years, Iended up hiring people to just basically
run it so that I could focuson syllabi full time. And that wound
down the business until weultimately shut it down. But there
were multiple times where Ijust felt like giving up entirely.
Just completely demoralizing.To go from crazy highs to crazy lows
(06:57):
immediately, very taxing. ButI'm in a very good position right
now. I'm very happy. I lovethat I can hyper focus on just one
thing, on syllabi growth. Theother thing about being an agency
owner is we worked with a lotof different businesses, and so it's
really just mind shifting towhat are the core needs of this client
(07:19):
and their ICP and theirspecific use case, and then pivot
to another business that hasan entirely different user base and
needs and all of this stuffand just constant mental shifting
with the brutal.
But yeah, oh, I. Yeah, thehighs and lows can be brutal and
especially at your level. Sothat brings two questions. The first
and foremost is how did younot quit?
(07:40):
Yeah. Meditation, reflection,time off, finding those little things
of balance and moments ofenjoyment and life. My wife, my dog,
we love traveling. I lovetraining, Muay Thai, just doing stuff
like that. I think our staffwas also a big reason that I carried
the business longer than itshould have been. Should have shut
(08:01):
it down way earlier than I. Ifinally did. But I really cared about
our employees and I didn'twant to hurt them. In any way. We
had an amazing trip toDisneyland. I took all of our staff
to Disneyland and I was reallyburned out at that time, but I still
wanted to do that trip. Sojust little things like that, just
chugging along, just likegrinding through it, to be honest.
(08:24):
Just grinding through.
So then with that being said,and you've mentioned burnout several
times, how did you recoverfrom burnout? Like I know just start
when you're burnt out. Juststarting another company does not
cure burnout. So how did yougo through the recovery process to
come back from burnout?
There's a great book I readlast year called or the beginning
of this year called Buy Backyouk Time by Dan Martell, which is
(08:46):
concepts that have also beentalked about in four hour work week
and just outsourcing yourtime. And so really what worked for
me is not being so hands on inthe job, just letting go of certain
tasks. It's okay to not doeverything yourself. Hiring account
managers to escalatesituations with clients and have
(09:09):
other people actually postingthe content. Like when I started
the company, it was me doingeverything. I was doing sales, I
was doing the, the ideaoutlines and the content, I was shooting
the videos, I was editing thevideos, I was publishing the videos
myself. And eventually youbring on some team members to do
a lot more of those things.And that I think really helped me
(09:31):
is to just move away from thebusiness itself to have more time.
And then eventually thatworked as a transition to being full
time with syllabi, which is amuch more enjoyable experience for
me personally.
Yeah, it sounds it and it's anincredible thing as I'm scoping it
out like I'm joining syllabibecause it's syllabi. It's really
(09:52):
cool. So thank you. And that'sa place of getting in flow for you.
I'm like, this is awesome andI'm very inspired by this. So one
of the things like I'm sittinghere thinking like with burnout and
what you're saying, how didyou come to the place? I don't know
of whether it be a question ofhow did you become mature enough
or emotionally secure enoughto let go of control to start giving
(10:17):
away stuff, what was thatprocess like? Because I know a lot
of my listeners want to do itall, try to do it all and struggle
with giving away stuff. Sowalk me through some of that.
Yeah, that's such a goodquestion. I don't know if there's
a clear answer for thatbecause everybody is going to go
down that path. In their ownway. I love learning and growing
(10:43):
in this industry and so I goto a lot of conferences, I have hired
a lot of coaches, I listen toa lot of podcasts, I listen to a
lot of audiobooks, I watch alot of videos. And I think just being
in that mindset and switchingfrom because I definitely grew up
(11:05):
in a scarcity mindset familyand it's hard for a lot of people
that grow up that way toswitch to an abundance mindset where
when you put a time value andyou can outsource that task for more
money than you value your timeat, you can actually free up your
(11:26):
time and make more money. Idefinitely associate that early I
read Four Hour Work Week in myearly 20s and I love that idea. And
I think just continuing tofocus on that because it does seem
like a lot. There's a conceptthat I really loved in buyback your
time of time inventory. And soif you just take, take a week or
(11:52):
two weeks and every task thatyou do, just write down a start time
and an end time for the entireday, the moment you wake up, what's
the first thing that you do?What are the. And how long does it
take you, how long does ittake you to get out of bed, put your
clothes on, brush your teeth,get a cup of coffee, let your dog
out or your kids or whateveryou got going on and then what? Every
(12:14):
single thing. How much timeare you spending on reading emails?
How much time are you spendingon social media? How much time are
you spending on creatingcontent? How much time are you spending
in meetings? How much time areyou doing X, Y and Z? Right? And
when you do that timeinventory, you can also outline importance
of those tasks and howvaluable those tasks are as well
(12:37):
as how much you enjoy thosetasks and having that, that collective
like average of this is a taskthat I like to do and is worth my
time versus a task that I hatedoing and is not worth my time and
figuring out, okay, I don'tneed to like I love being on social
media and I love posting and Ilove responding to comments and being
(13:00):
in the know, but I don't needto spend the time editing the videos.
That was a big realization forme. I still edited all of my videos
up until last six months,maybe even maybe nine months. I forget
exactly when I wrote thatbook. And so I am still at the beginning
phase and the end phase andthe in the touch. But I saved about
(13:21):
45 minutes every single daybecause I'm not editing my videos.
It's just Micro improvementsover time that get you into a headspace
of where you want to be. Justconsistently working towards where
you want to go. You want afour hour work week. You know what,
how start by taking inventoryof every single hour of your day
(13:42):
and then doing a practice likethat and just slowly working towards
whatever that goal is. Maybefour hours is impossible for you.
I don't do four hours a week.That's impossible for me. But just
little stuff like that, it'sjust progress over time.
I love that micro infant andover time, I love that. That's boom.
We're going to throw that upthere on a quote somewhere.
(14:03):
I will also say real quick, Idon't have kids. That makes a lot
of the decisions and thingsthat I do a lot easier. Fully transparent.
I don't have kids. I'm. I'mmarried. That makes it. That frees
up a lot more time too.
It really does. I have twochildren, they're both teens now,
so one's about to be on theway out the door to college. But
(14:24):
yeah, that, that does create alot of space and time. Yeah. So with
that being said, so whenyou're, when you're, you mentioned
you had shifted like severalpivots in your career and now you're
in syllabi. What were some ofthe challenges with building syllabi
and how'd you overcome it?
Yeah, so I'm a non technicalfounder and so finding the right
(14:46):
people and the right team is astruggle. It's becoming easier and
easier with AI now. But westarted developing syllabi 3 years
ago. This was pre chat GPTinitially tried to be the product
project manager of it and Itried to hire a team overseas to
develop it and ended upwasting about $15,000. But it got
(15:11):
to a point where there was avisible like MVP type thing and I
used that as leverage toapproach a really good friend of
mine that happened to be abrilliant software engineer and developer.
And he also came from like amarketing background. So he, and
he's just a close friend, justawesome dude. So he understands my
(15:31):
marketing language and the biggoal and idea of what we want to
do with syllabi and he wasable to help develop it and he became
our cto. And so what took,it's just a crazy story. What took
that development firm and myterrible project management six months
to build for $15,000 he grindsout in 48 hours over a weekend. And
(15:53):
it was better. He just builtit, rebuilt it from scratch better.
And so then we refined over aCouple of months and then we launched
it and then we kept growingthe team from there. Some other struggles.
So when we launched, welaunched the tool January 25th of
2023. So we're coming up onthe two year anniversary of being
public. We were a rocket shipat first. We went from 0 to 1 million
(16:18):
ARR in six months, which isincredibly quick and amazing traction.
And then the market gotsaturated. We realized that we were
not targeting the rightpeople, the right audience and the
right business. And so for 10months straight, we were going down
consistently downward slope.Tensions among business partners
(16:43):
get tough when money's on theline. We have to start taking less
salaries so that we don't haveto put that burden on, on employees.
We weren't able to raise asmuch money as we wanted to, even
though we're constantlypitching investors. And so it took
10 months of just talking toour users every single day, constantly
(17:03):
making tweaks and improvementsto make the system better, learning
that we really needed to pivotfrom what our core technology offer
was, which was avatars. Wewere focusing on the AI avatars at
first and we really switchedour messaging and our target key
features from avatars tofaceless videos. And we stopped talking
(17:24):
to business owners and westarted talking to content creators
and new content creators. Andwhen we did that, which was now six
months ago, we startedskyrocketing back up. And so now
we're growing very quick, up20% month over month. I think last
month we grew about 30, whichis amazing. We're now at the highest
we've ever been the mostusers, we've ever been the biggest
(17:45):
margin, everything. But ittook 10 months of slow descent into
nothing, which is stressful,but in retrospect, far less, less
stressful than the agencyspace. For me, I would deal with
this struggle again over theagency space. I will probably never
(18:06):
start an agency again or itwould be a very different model and
everything.
Right.
But yeah, I went from being anagency owner to a startup founder,
which is an entirely differentindustry, entirely different wheelhouse,
entirely different skill setsinvolved. I love it. I love what
I'm, I love what I'm doingright now. But yeah, it's not all
(18:27):
sunshine and rainbows.
Yeah. So then how do you dealwith failure? Like when you come
across those massive failures,how do you personally deal with those?
I try and look forward, I tryand take lessons away from the failures.
I think every failure is justa lesson that's, that's there on
the table for you to figureout how you could have done things
differently or better. Andthen you just, you have to take action
(18:48):
on that. You have to try andtest that theory and see if you can
actually improve on that. And,and that that works. We, we Deep
cohort analysis, overcomingchurn talking to users. They the
reason that they left anegative review was because of this.
All right, let's fix it. It'sa clear thing. Let's eliminate all
of the reasons why people arenot enjoying the tool or the service,
(19:11):
whatever it is that you'redoing. I try to always look forward
and I just try to see the bigpicture. I'm a big self cheerleader.
I think you have to do thatbecause you can't rely on other people
being your source ofmotivation. You have to be the motivator
yourself, at least for me. SoI try to celebrate every little win
(19:32):
that I have and be my ownbiggest cheerleader. And that has
gotten me through so far.
Amazing. And that's somethingthat I'm right with you. I have two
things that I do is I learn tolaugh at myself and I learned to
encourage myself because if Idon't laugh, I'm gonna cry sometimes.
So I've gotta laugh. So Iasked the previous guest, Jonathan
Mast, who you're very into,very quick.
Jonathan, great guy.
(19:53):
Yeah, great dude. And I askedhim this question and since you're
in the same space, being an AItype space, give us some future like
three to five years from now.What does AI look like?
Geez, it's almost hard topredict that far out because of how
fast everything's growing.Start even starting today. On this
recording, Sam Altmanannounced 12 days of OpenAI and I
(20:15):
haven't had time to go checkout what the first days yet. And
so they're making 12 days ofinsane announcements. Some of my
thoughts are we've seen a lotof movement towards agents and agentic
which if you're not familiarwith that terminology, it's basically
taking the knowledge from theLLM or the information that's given
(20:37):
and then doing the action onyour behalf. Until recently. Just
a quick example. You want ablog article for your website. Maybe
you go to an AI contentwriting tool and it gen you prompted
however you want. It generatesthe text, even gives you SEO headlines,
titles and everything. Youhave to still copy and paste that
(20:58):
into the website and optimizeeverything and click submit to search
console to send that articleto be indexed. Agents do all of it
for you. They'll do theresearch, it'll write the article
for you, it'll publish andOptimize it on your website for you
and it'll. They'll submit itto your into search console and search
platforms. Posted on socialmedia, whole 9 yards actually does
(21:22):
the actions for you. I thinkClaude just rolled out two months
ago. The ability to do actionson your computer. So it will do mouse
clicks and copy and pasteinformation into spreadsheets. Really
basic functionality right now,but that's taking it from cloud to
actual in device and doingactions on your behalf. So we're
(21:43):
going to see, I think, a hugepush in agents and I think agents
are going to disrupteverything that we've seen even faster
than some of these AI toolshave evolved. The other thing on
the horizon is robots. We'realready seeing Optimus Bot. I think
last month or two months ago,Elon Musk did that big demo of the
(22:05):
Optimus bots and there's acouple other companies that are getting
into machinery. Very simple toimagine just putting a software chip
with Grok or OpenAI or Claudeor any of these LLM models right
into the robot. I saw a demoyesterday. Somebody built this little
walking robot thing is likefrom Interstellar, basically the
(22:27):
robot thing. And it just has afull conversation with it. We're
going to see, I think in lessthan five years, robots in a lot
of people's homes that arecooking meals for them, doing laundry,
sitting next to you, watchingsports, just being a companion. Those
are, I think that's going tobe. Those are. Those are two areas
that I really see coming very soon.
(22:49):
It reminds me of the movieBicentennial man with Robin Williams
the companion.
And that's what's coming next.We get enough of these robots in
society walking amongst us andthey not only you could already argue
that AI is passing the Turingtest because it's able to confuse.
But once they have advancedreasoning and logic, then it gets
into those questions thatBicentennial man asks and do robots
(23:12):
that. That feel and can logic.Do we give them rights? That's a
really interesting question.
That is an interestingquestion. But I'd rather buy Centennial
man than the I robot. Yeah,but that's a whole other conversation.
I'm. I'm with you there. I'm.I side with Robin Williams. Yes.
(23:33):
Yeah, we always want RobinWilliams. So with that coming down
as we land the plane on theshow for today, I usually do a segment
that's called if you guys havelistened for a while to the show,
it's hashtag wisdombomb. Andif you haven't, then just let you
know. This is where the Guestgives a quick shot of wisdom like
a portable truth that you cantake imply into your life. I do this
(23:55):
on my Facebook every day justabout hashtag wisdom bomb, hashtag
wisdom of the day. If you wantto show us those up or just follow
me on my Facebook at. Leadwith Jim. With that being said, Austin,
will you give us a wisdom bombthat people can just take with them
today?
Yeah. Perfectionism isprocrastination. Just execute, improve
(24:16):
along the way and stay consistent.
Perfect. I like that. That's.I'm going to take that one for me
because I deal withperfectionism so I'm going to take
that personally. And with thatbeing said, how can we find you?
Yeah, if you wanted to checkout syllabi, it's S Y L A B Y IO
I am very available online andaccessible. My name is Austin Armstrong.
(24:38):
You can find me basically onany social media platform. Very active.
I am the nerdy AI with glassesAustin Armstrong. I am not the defensive
lineman coach of the FloridaGators Austin Armstrong. Nor am I
the relationship vlogger outof Austin Armstrong. Yeah, I. I am
right there in the middle.I've tried to set up a collaboration
(24:59):
between the three most mostfamous Austin Armstrongs, but they
keep leaving me on red. Sohere we are.
Well, with that being said toyou, the listener, we will make sure
that all of that is in theshow notes. Unless you need like
football or need relationshipadvice. We want you to go to the
the real Austin Armstrong andeverything that we mentioned today
will be in the notes for you.Everything will be clickable for
(25:21):
you for easy access. And withthat being said, thank you for an
incredible conversation today,Austin. It's been an honor to have
you and I appreciate you very much.
Thank you so much, Jim. It wasa really fun conversation. I really
love the deep questions.
I appreciate that. And to you,the listener, thanks for listening
this far. And just guess what?We're here just to empower, encourage
and equip you. We want you totake action and all that God's called
(25:43):
you to. So make sure you dothat every single day. Take action.
And then also, if you feel soinclined, leave a review, some likes
and things on that to toreally boast through this podcast.
With that being said, we willsee you on an episode, whether it
be a future one or a previousone. But make sure you're just tuning
back in for some incredibleconversations with incredible people.
(26:04):
This has been grace in thegrind. Whether you're a Christian
leader looking for guidance oran entrepreneur seeking inspiration,
it's Jim's passion to equipand encourage you. Make sure to check
out Jim's solo episodes wherehe shares practical leadership insights
grounded in a biblicalperspective. We hope you've enjoyed
the show. If you did, makesure to like, rate and review and
(26:28):
we'll be back soon. But in themeantime, find us on social media.
Lead with Jim and you can alsohit the website at www.leadwithjim.com.
take care of yourself andwe'll see you next time on Grace
in the Grind.
Welcome to Grace and theGrind, the podcast where we dive
deep into the journeys ofheart centered and purpose driven
leaders and entrepreneurs.We'll pull back the curtain to explore
the stories behind success,how people have navigated the toughest
challenges, overcome theirobstacles, and found their way through
the grind to build somethingtruly impactful. Whether you're a
(00:24):
Christian leader looking forguidance or an entrepreneur seeking
inspiration, we're here toequip and encourage you on your journey.
So let's get started and findthe grace within the grind. This
is Grace in the Grind. And nowyour host, Jim Burgoon.
Welcome to Grace in the Grindwhere we're here to empower, to equip,
(00:45):
and to encourage Christians inbusiness and Christian entrepreneurs
to do all that God has calledthem to. And today, a new friend
of mine is on the show, AustinArmstrong from Syllabi IO. Austin,
welcome to the show.
Jim, thank you so much forhaving me on. It's truly an honor
and a privilege and I'mexcited for a fun conversation.
Same here. So why don't we dothis? Let's take the next minute
(01:05):
to really introduce theaudience who you are and what you
do.
Yeah. So I have been doingsocial media marketing for 20 years
now, which is crazy to thinkabout and say, but I was fortunate
enough to find what my callingin life is very early. So When I
was 14 years old, I gotstarted on MySpace and I very quickly
(01:27):
learned how to grow a largefollowing and build little businesses
around that and turn it intomultiple streams of income. And I
really just got addicted tothat process and I've been more or
less doing it ever since. Nowfast forward to about 11 years ago
is where I really started myprofessional journey in this space
(01:47):
in video marketing for socialmedia. I had moved out to California
and I started as an unpaidintern at a video marketing company
that specialized in addictiontreatment marketing and behavioral
health marketing. And I workedmy way up from being an unpaid intern
to a paid intern to a parttime employee to a full time employee.
(02:09):
That led me to working atseveral drug and alcohol treatment
centers and different mentalhealth nonprofits. And then six years
ago I started my first companywith my boss, which was really cool.
At that same company that Iworked my way up in, he was my mentor.
I was also fortunate enough tofind a mentor in life in my early
(02:29):
20s. So I really went fromunpaid intern to business partner.
That was a company calledSocialty Pro where we helped service
based businesses grow onsocial media with a specialty in
short form, video. Within thatsix years, that's where I really
started to grow my personalbrand online. I had a lot of early
success with TikTok and Ileveraged that to grow across every
(02:53):
other major social mediaplatform. I today have about 3 million
followers on social media.Talking about AI and how you can
grow on social media, generateleads and sales for your business,
and develop different streamsof income. Two years ago, I took
all of that knowledge and Iwanted to solve a lot of the problems
(03:16):
that business owners had andcontent creators and entrepreneurs
had that caused them to hire amarketing agency in the first place.
But a problem with that isthat agencies are quite expensive.
And so as a solo founder or anew entrepreneur or a small business,
you need to create content,you need to be consistent, but it's.
(03:37):
You might not have the budgetto hire a marketing agency. And I
just wanted to solve like allof these problems, which led to syllabi.
So Syllabi is really aculmination of my 20 years of experience
on social media, 11 years ofvideo marketing experience, and I
created a tool that lets youfind ideas, create, schedule and
(03:58):
publish videos on social mediaon any topic, in any niche in a matter
of minutes for a very lowaffordable price. And it's been truly
a blessing to see it grow overthe last two years.
Man, what an incrediblejourney from intern to business partner.
Like just skip the wholething, let's.
Just go right for it.
I absolutely love it, man. Sowith that being said, what were some
(04:19):
of your challenges? That's ahuge like obviously 20 years and
you're probably personalfriends with Tom from MySpace. I
remember MySpace.
Yeah, it was my first friend.
Yeah, yeah, my. Thank you, Iremember that. But going from the
unpaid intern to the businesspartner to the all that you're doing
and the massive influencerthat you are. Like, what were some
of those challenges? Likeimposter syndrome, fear? Like what
(04:41):
were some of the things youwere going through?
Yeah, ton, tons of that. ThisI saw the long term vision and I
was quite poor for a long timeas you grow up and hustle, but I
knew that it would eventuallypay off into expertise and it did.
I stuck to that journeybecause I love what I do and I loved
(05:03):
it along the way. I especiallybeing an unpaid intern. But even
just being a part timeemployee, finding the balance of
actually needing to pay billsand feed yourself, there were quite
a few weeks where the groceryshopping was, the Walmart across
the street and. And eating drypackaged noodles and ramen and that's
what I ate. To get by with alot of roommates that were not ideal
(05:27):
situations, but I kept. Keepimproving, keep learning failures
along the way. I would say themost recent struggle that I had was
I got quite burnout in theagency space. It was very difficult
for me to juggle because I'mvery attached to the work that I
(05:47):
do, and I take a lot of pridein the work that I do. And so there
were. Being an entrepreneur asa roller coaster, there are so many
amazing highs, and the lowscan just challenge you to your core.
And so there would be timeswhere, you know, everything's, it's
a great month, we'reprofitable, every, everything's good,
(06:11):
and then all of a sudden, forwhatever reason, you lose a key client
or two clients, and then allof a sudden it's, oh, my gosh, am
I going to be able to makepayroll this week? I can't pay myself
because I need to pay myemployees. You have an employee quit
on the spot because they'regoing through their own struggles
and stuff. And that's happenedat core moments. And so it just.
(06:32):
That roller coaster reallyburned me out. After running that
business for six years, Iended up hiring people to just basically
run it so that I could focuson syllabi full time. And that wound
down the business until weultimately shut it down. But there
were multiple times where Ijust felt like giving up entirely.
Just completely demoralizing.To go from crazy highs to crazy lows
(06:57):
immediately, very taxing. ButI'm in a very good position right
now. I'm very happy. I lovethat I can hyper focus on just one
thing, on syllabi growth. Theother thing about being an agency
owner is we worked with a lotof different businesses, and so it's
really just mind shifting towhat are the core needs of this client
(07:19):
and their ICP and theirspecific use case, and then pivot
to another business that hasan entirely different user base and
needs and all of this stuffand just constant mental shifting
with the brutal.
But yeah, oh, I. Yeah, thehighs and lows can be brutal and
especially at your level. Sothat brings two questions. The first
and foremost is how did younot quit?
(07:40):
Yeah. Meditation, reflection,time off, finding those little things
of balance and moments ofenjoyment and life. My wife, my dog,
we love traveling. I lovetraining, Muay Thai, just doing stuff
like that. I think our staffwas also a big reason that I carried
the business longer than itshould have been. Should have shut
(08:01):
it down way earlier than I. Ifinally did. But I really cared about
our employees and I didn'twant to hurt them. In any way. We
had an amazing trip toDisneyland. I took all of our staff
to Disneyland and I was reallyburned out at that time, but I still
wanted to do that trip. Sojust little things like that, just
chugging along, just likegrinding through it, to be honest.
(08:24):
Just grinding through.
So then with that being said,and you've mentioned burnout several
times, how did you recoverfrom burnout? Like I know just start
when you're burnt out. Juststarting another company does not
cure burnout. So how did yougo through the recovery process to
come back from burnout?
There's a great book I readlast year called or the beginning
of this year called Buy Backyouk Time by Dan Martell, which is
(08:46):
concepts that have also beentalked about in four hour work week
and just outsourcing yourtime. And so really what worked for
me is not being so hands on inthe job, just letting go of certain
tasks. It's okay to not doeverything yourself. Hiring account
managers to escalatesituations with clients and have
(09:09):
other people actually postingthe content. Like when I started
the company, it was me doingeverything. I was doing sales, I
was doing the, the ideaoutlines and the content, I was shooting
the videos, I was editing thevideos, I was publishing the videos
myself. And eventually youbring on some team members to do
a lot more of those things.And that I think really helped me
(09:31):
is to just move away from thebusiness itself to have more time.
And then eventually thatworked as a transition to being full
time with syllabi, which is amuch more enjoyable experience for
me personally.
Yeah, it sounds it and it's anincredible thing as I'm scoping it
out like I'm joining syllabibecause it's syllabi. It's really
(09:52):
cool. So thank you. And that'sa place of getting in flow for you.
I'm like, this is awesome andI'm very inspired by this. So one
of the things like I'm sittinghere thinking like with burnout and
what you're saying, how didyou come to the place? I don't know
of whether it be a question ofhow did you become mature enough
or emotionally secure enoughto let go of control to start giving
(10:17):
away stuff, what was thatprocess like? Because I know a lot
of my listeners want to do itall, try to do it all and struggle
with giving away stuff. Sowalk me through some of that.
Yeah, that's such a goodquestion. I don't know if there's
a clear answer for thatbecause everybody is going to go
down that path. In their ownway. I love learning and growing
(10:43):
in this industry and so I goto a lot of conferences, I have hired
a lot of coaches, I listen toa lot of podcasts, I listen to a
lot of audiobooks, I watch alot of videos. And I think just being
in that mindset and switchingfrom because I definitely grew up
(11:05):
in a scarcity mindset familyand it's hard for a lot of people
that grow up that way toswitch to an abundance mindset where
when you put a time value andyou can outsource that task for more
money than you value your timeat, you can actually free up your
(11:26):
time and make more money. Idefinitely associate that early I
read Four Hour Work Week in myearly 20s and I love that idea. And
I think just continuing tofocus on that because it does seem
like a lot. There's a conceptthat I really loved in buyback your
time of time inventory. And soif you just take, take a week or
(11:52):
two weeks and every task thatyou do, just write down a start time
and an end time for the entireday, the moment you wake up, what's
the first thing that you do?What are the. And how long does it
take you, how long does ittake you to get out of bed, put your
clothes on, brush your teeth,get a cup of coffee, let your dog
out or your kids or whateveryou got going on and then what? Every
(12:14):
single thing. How much timeare you spending on reading emails?
How much time are you spendingon social media? How much time are
you spending on creatingcontent? How much time are you spending
in meetings? How much time areyou doing X, Y and Z? Right? And
when you do that timeinventory, you can also outline importance
of those tasks and howvaluable those tasks are as well
(12:37):
as how much you enjoy thosetasks and having that, that collective
like average of this is a taskthat I like to do and is worth my
time versus a task that I hatedoing and is not worth my time and
figuring out, okay, I don'tneed to like I love being on social
media and I love posting and Ilove responding to comments and being
(13:00):
in the know, but I don't needto spend the time editing the videos.
That was a big realization forme. I still edited all of my videos
up until last six months,maybe even maybe nine months. I forget
exactly when I wrote thatbook. And so I am still at the beginning
phase and the end phase andthe in the touch. But I saved about
(13:21):
45 minutes every single daybecause I'm not editing my videos.
It's just Micro improvementsover time that get you into a headspace
of where you want to be. Justconsistently working towards where
you want to go. You want afour hour work week. You know what,
how start by taking inventoryof every single hour of your day
(13:42):
and then doing a practice likethat and just slowly working towards
whatever that goal is. Maybefour hours is impossible for you.
I don't do four hours a week.That's impossible for me. But just
little stuff like that, it'sjust progress over time.
I love that micro infant andover time, I love that. That's boom.
We're going to throw that upthere on a quote somewhere.
(14:03):
I will also say real quick, Idon't have kids. That makes a lot
of the decisions and thingsthat I do a lot easier. Fully transparent.
I don't have kids. I'm. I'mmarried. That makes it. That frees
up a lot more time too.
It really does. I have twochildren, they're both teens now,
so one's about to be on theway out the door to college. But
(14:24):
yeah, that, that does create alot of space and time. Yeah. So with
that being said, so whenyou're, when you're, you mentioned
you had shifted like severalpivots in your career and now you're
in syllabi. What were some ofthe challenges with building syllabi
and how'd you overcome it?
Yeah, so I'm a non technicalfounder and so finding the right
(14:46):
people and the right team is astruggle. It's becoming easier and
easier with AI now. But westarted developing syllabi 3 years
ago. This was pre chat GPTinitially tried to be the product
project manager of it and Itried to hire a team overseas to
develop it and ended upwasting about $15,000. But it got
(15:11):
to a point where there was avisible like MVP type thing and I
used that as leverage toapproach a really good friend of
mine that happened to be abrilliant software engineer and developer.
And he also came from like amarketing background. So he, and
he's just a close friend, justawesome dude. So he understands my
(15:31):
marketing language and the biggoal and idea of what we want to
do with syllabi and he wasable to help develop it and he became
our cto. And so what took,it's just a crazy story. What took
that development firm and myterrible project management six months
to build for $15,000 he grindsout in 48 hours over a weekend. And
(15:53):
it was better. He just builtit, rebuilt it from scratch better.
And so then we refined over aCouple of months and then we launched
it and then we kept growingthe team from there. Some other struggles.
So when we launched, welaunched the tool January 25th of
2023. So we're coming up onthe two year anniversary of being
public. We were a rocket shipat first. We went from 0 to 1 million
(16:18):
ARR in six months, which isincredibly quick and amazing traction.
And then the market gotsaturated. We realized that we were
not targeting the rightpeople, the right audience and the
right business. And so for 10months straight, we were going down
consistently downward slope.Tensions among business partners
(16:43):
get tough when money's on theline. We have to start taking less
salaries so that we don't haveto put that burden on, on employees.
We weren't able to raise asmuch money as we wanted to, even
though we're constantlypitching investors. And so it took
10 months of just talking toour users every single day, constantly
(17:03):
making tweaks and improvementsto make the system better, learning
that we really needed to pivotfrom what our core technology offer
was, which was avatars. Wewere focusing on the AI avatars at
first and we really switchedour messaging and our target key
features from avatars tofaceless videos. And we stopped talking
(17:24):
to business owners and westarted talking to content creators
and new content creators. Andwhen we did that, which was now six
months ago, we startedskyrocketing back up. And so now
we're growing very quick, up20% month over month. I think last
month we grew about 30, whichis amazing. We're now at the highest
we've ever been the mostusers, we've ever been the biggest
(17:45):
margin, everything. But ittook 10 months of slow descent into
nothing, which is stressful,but in retrospect, far less, less
stressful than the agencyspace. For me, I would deal with
this struggle again over theagency space. I will probably never
(18:06):
start an agency again or itwould be a very different model and
everything.
Right.
But yeah, I went from being anagency owner to a startup founder,
which is an entirely differentindustry, entirely different wheelhouse,
entirely different skill setsinvolved. I love it. I love what
I'm, I love what I'm doingright now. But yeah, it's not all
(18:27):
sunshine and rainbows.
Yeah. So then how do you dealwith failure? Like when you come
across those massive failures,how do you personally deal with those?
I try and look forward, I tryand take lessons away from the failures.
I think every failure is justa lesson that's, that's there on
the table for you to figureout how you could have done things
differently or better. Andthen you just, you have to take action
(18:48):
on that. You have to try andtest that theory and see if you can
actually improve on that. And,and that that works. We, we Deep
cohort analysis, overcomingchurn talking to users. They the
reason that they left anegative review was because of this.
All right, let's fix it. It'sa clear thing. Let's eliminate all
of the reasons why people arenot enjoying the tool or the service,
(19:11):
whatever it is that you'redoing. I try to always look forward
and I just try to see the bigpicture. I'm a big self cheerleader.
I think you have to do thatbecause you can't rely on other people
being your source ofmotivation. You have to be the motivator
yourself, at least for me. SoI try to celebrate every little win
(19:32):
that I have and be my ownbiggest cheerleader. And that has
gotten me through so far.
Amazing. And that's somethingthat I'm right with you. I have two
things that I do is I learn tolaugh at myself and I learned to
encourage myself because if Idon't laugh, I'm gonna cry sometimes.
So I've gotta laugh. So Iasked the previous guest, Jonathan
Mast, who you're very into,very quick.
Jonathan, great guy.
(19:53):
Yeah, great dude. And I askedhim this question and since you're
in the same space, being an AItype space, give us some future like
three to five years from now.What does AI look like?
Geez, it's almost hard topredict that far out because of how
fast everything's growing.Start even starting today. On this
recording, Sam Altmanannounced 12 days of OpenAI and I
(20:15):
haven't had time to go checkout what the first days yet. And
so they're making 12 days ofinsane announcements. Some of my
thoughts are we've seen a lotof movement towards agents and agentic
which if you're not familiarwith that terminology, it's basically
taking the knowledge from theLLM or the information that's given
(20:37):
and then doing the action onyour behalf. Until recently. Just
a quick example. You want ablog article for your website. Maybe
you go to an AI contentwriting tool and it gen you prompted
however you want. It generatesthe text, even gives you SEO headlines,
titles and everything. Youhave to still copy and paste that
(20:58):
into the website and optimizeeverything and click submit to search
console to send that articleto be indexed. Agents do all of it
for you. They'll do theresearch, it'll write the article
for you, it'll publish andOptimize it on your website for you
and it'll. They'll submit itto your into search console and search
platforms. Posted on socialmedia, whole 9 yards actually does
(21:22):
the actions for you. I thinkClaude just rolled out two months
ago. The ability to do actionson your computer. So it will do mouse
clicks and copy and pasteinformation into spreadsheets. Really
basic functionality right now,but that's taking it from cloud to
actual in device and doingactions on your behalf. So we're
(21:43):
going to see, I think, a hugepush in agents and I think agents
are going to disrupteverything that we've seen even faster
than some of these AI toolshave evolved. The other thing on
the horizon is robots. We'realready seeing Optimus Bot. I think
last month or two months ago,Elon Musk did that big demo of the
(22:05):
Optimus bots and there's acouple other companies that are getting
into machinery. Very simple toimagine just putting a software chip
with Grok or OpenAI or Claudeor any of these LLM models right
into the robot. I saw a demoyesterday. Somebody built this little
walking robot thing is likefrom Interstellar, basically the
(22:27):
robot thing. And it just has afull conversation with it. We're
going to see, I think in lessthan five years, robots in a lot
of people's homes that arecooking meals for them, doing laundry,
sitting next to you, watchingsports, just being a companion. Those
are, I think that's going tobe. Those are. Those are two areas
that I really see coming very soon.
(22:49):
It reminds me of the movieBicentennial man with Robin Williams
the companion.
And that's what's coming next.We get enough of these robots in
society walking amongst us andthey not only you could already argue
that AI is passing the Turingtest because it's able to confuse.
But once they have advancedreasoning and logic, then it gets
into those questions thatBicentennial man asks and do robots
(23:12):
that. That feel and can logic.Do we give them rights? That's a
really interesting question.
That is an interestingquestion. But I'd rather buy Centennial
man than the I robot. Yeah,but that's a whole other conversation.
I'm. I'm with you there. I'm.I side with Robin Williams. Yes.
(23:33):
Yeah, we always want RobinWilliams. So with that coming down
as we land the plane on theshow for today, I usually do a segment
that's called if you guys havelistened for a while to the show,
it's hashtag wisdombomb. Andif you haven't, then just let you
know. This is where the Guestgives a quick shot of wisdom like
a portable truth that you cantake imply into your life. I do this
(23:55):
on my Facebook every day justabout hashtag wisdom bomb, hashtag
wisdom of the day. If you wantto show us those up or just follow
me on my Facebook at. Leadwith Jim. With that being said, Austin,
will you give us a wisdom bombthat people can just take with them
today?
Yeah. Perfectionism isprocrastination. Just execute, improve
(24:16):
along the way and stay consistent.
Perfect. I like that. That's.I'm going to take that one for me
because I deal withperfectionism so I'm going to take
that personally. And with thatbeing said, how can we find you?
Yeah, if you wanted to checkout syllabi, it's S Y L A B Y IO
I am very available online andaccessible. My name is Austin Armstrong.
(24:38):
You can find me basically onany social media platform. Very active.
I am the nerdy AI with glassesAustin Armstrong. I am not the defensive
lineman coach of the FloridaGators Austin Armstrong. Nor am I
the relationship vlogger outof Austin Armstrong. Yeah, I. I am
right there in the middle.I've tried to set up a collaboration
(24:59):
between the three most mostfamous Austin Armstrongs, but they
keep leaving me on red. Sohere we are.
Well, with that being said toyou, the listener, we will make sure
that all of that is in theshow notes. Unless you need like
football or need relationshipadvice. We want you to go to the
the real Austin Armstrong andeverything that we mentioned today
will be in the notes for you.Everything will be clickable for
(25:21):
you for easy access. And withthat being said, thank you for an
incredible conversation today,Austin. It's been an honor to have
you and I appreciate you very much.
Thank you so much, Jim. It wasa really fun conversation. I really
love the deep questions.
I appreciate that. And to you,the listener, thanks for listening
this far. And just guess what?We're here just to empower, encourage
and equip you. We want you totake action and all that God's called
(25:43):
you to. So make sure you dothat every single day. Take action.
And then also, if you feel soinclined, leave a review, some likes
and things on that to toreally boast through this podcast.
With that being said, we willsee you on an episode, whether it
be a future one or a previousone. But make sure you're just tuning
back in for some incredibleconversations with incredible people.
(26:04):
This has been grace in thegrind. Whether you're a Christian
leader looking for guidance oran entrepreneur seeking inspiration,
it's Jim's passion to equipand encourage you. Make sure to check
out Jim's solo episodes wherehe shares practical leadership insights
grounded in a biblicalperspective. We hope you've enjoyed
the show. If you did, makesure to like, rate and review and
(26:28):
we'll be back soon. But in themeantime, find us on social media.
Lead with Jim and you can alsohit the website at www.leadwithjim.com.
take care of yourself andwe'll see you next time on Grace
in the Grind.
Host
Jim Burgoon
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