Speare - Be More Productive When Writing with Paula Rizzo and Kent Sisco from Speare

Hey there, Paula Rizzo here along with Kent Sisco, who has been a reader of my book and then my blog and then actually became a client of mine. He took a course called Lights, Camera, Expert that I run with my business partner, Tara Truspicio, that helps experts and entrepreneurs get out in the world in the media. So using my background as a TV producer. So Kent, you're in every little facet of my life. I love it.

Yeah. And it's been awesome. I've loved it.

That's great. It's great. So you've, you've worked in tech basically your whole career and, uh, now you have a really exciting exciting product that you put together that actually makes people more productive. So of course I always lean into that and I'm like, oh, tell me, tell me a little bit more. So, SPEAR is what it's called. And so if you could just give us a little bit of info on it, what is it?

Sure. SPEAR, the name is derived from Shakespeare. Ah, as an author and a deliverer of messages, many new words for the English language, we thought, let's seize upon that name. And since it's a productivity tool, let's shorten it and call it Spear so that it has this connotation of making short work of everything you do.

Ah, I like that. Get to the shortcut. Okay, so who is this for? How does it help you to write faster?

Well, if you write anything at all from emails to newsletters, content creation, blogs, books, any of that kind of stuff, Spear is for you. It really is a replacement for Microsoft Word, Google Docs, any other writing software that you're using.

Ah, and so you always say that that's like the blank page is like, you know, death to the, to the writer's productivity and creativity. So how is this different from just staring at a blank screen and saying like, oh yeah, I've got to write?

Right, yeah, so we went back to the drawing board saying, well, how do we make these writing tools more effective, more efficient? And just looking around us, it was really— the idea was spawned from this Thanksgiving meal that we had with all the cousins and family, extended family members, and they're all— what are they doing? They got their cell phones out and they're texting away like crazy, from the grandmas all the way down to the youngest youngster, you know, and they're uninhibited. They're writing like crazy. And now, yeah, socially, that's not a good thing to do. But it proved the point that chunking things out in small bits and pieces gets your thoughts written down, gets your opinions out really quickly. Why not use that same model for actually chunking out large projects?

Ah, so the technology allows you really to sort of text your work? Is that what you're doing? Like you're just, you're not doing like, oh, I'm going to write the whole chapter. I'm going to write pieces of it as it comes to me.

Right, yeah. And so each thread that you'd have in text messaging, we made those boards. So let's say that you are working on multiple projects, a book, newsletters, and stuff for work, etc. And you could go ahead and just text yourself those thoughts, if you will, on them.

Mm-hmm.

In order to make it work, rather than like texting where everything becomes static boxes. You can actually pick them up, move them around, split them, merge them, do all kinds of creative editing with them. Ah, your complex document.

See, and that's the great thing, because other people— and I've done this in the past too— we're all like, email myself something. I'll be like, oh, that's a good idea, or oh, that's a good sentence, and I'll email it, and then off it goes. Or I'll be like, oh, you know what, I'll put that in Evernote, and then it's sort of there, but it's not. Like, I love the idea that this is all only for writing. This is the only place that these things are going to be captured. And so that'll make you even more productive. But you yourself use it and write like an unbelievable amount. So could you just tell us a little bit about how you're able to be more productive using this tool?

Yeah, I, on average, I'm doing about 2,500 words a day. About 80% of it is speech-to-text with my cell phone.

Yeah.

I capture those individual thoughts and then even on the cell phone itself, you can just swipe left or right to go to the different boards. You can pick up blocks and you can drag and drop them to the different boards. So as you're talking throughout the day, it really only takes about 20 minutes to do 2,500 words.

Wow.

And that's not just 20 minutes solid. It's usually about a minute or two at most. Throughout the day. So then you can put all those two together, the sum of it then is 20 minutes. And then I, you know, in the evening I'll go through and just kind of edit stuff. Speech-to-text still is not a perfect solution.

No, it is not. You can say some very interesting things that you did not intend to say. Yes, that happens quite often.

And what I found too is it's just, it has sometimes sparked some innovation because it's like, oh, I didn't mean to say that, but wow, that is a great idea. Yeah.

How funny, a happy little accident. I love it. I love it. But you know, it is interesting though. I find myself doing, you know, text to speech to speak to text or whatever it is, because I can just get it out faster than even, I'm a pretty fast texter and I'm a pretty quick typer. But for some reason, like that barrier kind of will stunt my creativity. Do you find that that happens with other people? The speech-to-text side of it is more helpful than even just texting or writing or, you know, there's kind of like a barrier there sometimes.

Right. Yeah. There's a barrier in writing in general and just getting your ideas and thoughts out. If you're being— if you're talking to another human being, it's a lot easier. That's why texting really works great.. So, but when you try to use writing systems that, to the blank page, you're not writing really to someone else, you're trying to organize everything, ask the questions and stuff like this. So you're not really being prompted in the way that you would in a social setting. But with speech-to-text, it does take some time to get used to speech-to-text, you know, when you're writing your book. But once you get used to that, That's an awesome way. The texting side of it too, it does take some time to think of it in terms of chunking out your thoughts. But again, once you develop that habit, that habit is actually a better habit than trying to form a habit of sitting down for 90 minutes on a weekend and, you know, really grinding out something. If you can develop the daily habit of capturing your thoughts, it's revolutionary. It seriously will transform your life, change your behavior towards writing,, and, and your attitude towards it too. It's, it's, we've had nothing but great testimonies from this.

That's terrific. I mean, because it is true, you, you find, I've written about this before, that when you have writer's block or you can't be creative, you have to go out and do things, go for a walk, go meet with friends, and that's when the ideas spark. And then that's when you're like, oh gosh, but I'm not near my computer right now, you know. So having this, your phone is with you all the time.

Yeah, exactly. And the best writing device is your phone. Mm-hmm.

I love it. It's so great.

Yeah, so the— that transition though from texting model to actually believing that you're writing some complex document or your book, it's a belief structure. It's a psychology. So you have to break the psychology of writing in order to jump in and have this transformation.

The mindset is what will do it. But I think it's a kind of a fun way to do it too. You know, it's not as like, oh, I have to sit down and write. Oh, you know, I have to— so I love that. But for people who are interested, who want to get it, could you tell us, you know, how does it work? How much is it? How long do you get a license for? How does that all work?

Okay. Yeah. So really quickly, one last point here is that SPEAR is actually building a bank of thoughts that you can cash in on. So when you hit that wall of writer's block, it really allows you to reach in and grab those deposits that you've made throughout the week. And that's really the part that makes SPEAR just amazingly fun. So, from the— how do you get engaged with SPEAR? You go to SPEAR.com, S-P-E-A-R-E.com, short for SPEAR. And the— it's less than $3 a week to produce an unbelievable amount of productive writing. So, the value is amazing. And you get to try all the product first, try it out, see what you like about it, and and see if you can integrate your stuff. You can copy paste your current projects in, and you can see them automatically turned into little—

Ah, that's cool. So you could have all your stuff in one place then. You're gonna have all your writing projects, even if you've worked on them in other platforms, you can integrate them. So can you also use it, like, is there a desktop version as well, or is it only on your phone?

It's a web app, so it runs on any device you can think of. So if your toaster has some web interface, Hey, it may be happening.

It's happening, right? I've seen, what is it, like refrigerators that have all kinds of, right?

Yeah. It might be possible to run it there. We haven't actually tried it yet, but.

Who knows? The sky's the limit. Well, Ken, thank you so much for chit-chatting with me here. This has been really fun. And I can't tell you how proud I am of how you've come through the program with me and Terry, because you've put yourself out there, you know, in the world and you've gotten a lot of media for this. So, you know, kudos to you for really, really putting it out there and being passionate about something and helping people be more productive. I love it.

Yeah. And thank you so much for your coaching too, because it's really helped me get to the place where I'm at. It really is a great course. I loved it and I can see myself actually taking it again.

I love it. Well, that's the point. You have lifetime access, so you just go through and, you know, you need a refresher, you just go right through it. Um, So Spear.com, guys, check it out, and I'll talk to y'all soon. See ya.

Thank you.