Leaving Apple and Going All In On Speakflow | Multithreaded Income Episode 31 with Corey Griffin

Welcome back to the show, everyone. I am joined by my special guest today, Corey Griffin. Corey, how are you today?

Good. Good. How are you?

Good. Uh, and we have to say for the record, there's no relation, uh,

Yeah. Forgot about that. Yeah.

close enough, but if you're, if you're watching the video, you know, there. There's no relation. Chloe, I'm really glad to have you here today. Uh, I think we have a lot of really interesting topics, um, but for the crowd out there, who's never had the opportunity to meet you or see anything you've done on the internet, uh, tell us a little bit about. Yourself. And what are you currently working on?

Yeah. So I'm Corey Griffin. I'm the, I'm currently working on, um, speak flow. I'm the founder and developer of, um, that app or website rather. Um, and I'm a software engineer, designer, uh, musician. I have a lot of hobbies, so I got like photography, videography, everything, but I'm mostly doing software engineering as in terms of how it relates to the internet. And, uh, yeah, that's me have, I live in Los Angeles, uh, two kids and a wife.

we've known each other for a couple of years now. Um, and before you used to have a day job, um, want to talk about kind of what you did before you quit your day job.

So my most recent job was Apple. Um, I was working on the Apple music team. Um, I was software engineer there, mainly using Ruby on rails. I know I could be a little technical. Cause the multi threaded, um, so we mainly use Ruby on Rails, which is kind of surprising for a lot of people when they hear that. Um, but before that I worked at Shopify Vox, Rotten Tomatoes, like if I had a lot of jobs and this is just over like the last like five to six years, so definitely like a job hopper.

I didn't realize you. So I know you worked at Apple. I actually didn't know you worked at those other places. That's really interesting to learn. Uh, so you've kind of jumped all around like Silicon Valley, right

remotely. A lot of it. Yeah. A lot of it was yeah. Yeah. Remotely. Right. Um, a lot of it was based in LA. So the last in person job that I had, well, Apple, they did the hybrid thing. But before that, the last in person job I had was, uh, I run tomatoes in Beverly hills, but, but yeah.

We're going to talk a little bit about speak flow. Um, And I want to lead into, uh, you were working on Speakflow while working a full time job. Um, so first for anyone out there who's never heard of Speakflow, tell us kind of what Speakflow does.

So speak flows online teleprompter or like a browser based teleprompter. Um, that can do a lot, uh, basically can follow your voice as you speak. Um, it can sync multiple devices. It has team features, so you can collaborate on scripts. Uh, you can record videos in the browser with it. Um, and yeah, kind of just like a really good teleprompter software as oddly specific as that is.

How'd you come up with the idea for Speakflow?

Um, So it was a couple of years back and my wife was on maternity leave and I decided to, well, we had, we had a baby. She was on maternity leave. I was on paternity leave. Um, and. You know, you help as much as you can, but it's not that much for you to do as the father, like I'm not able to, uh, breastfeed or anything like that. So I would spend a lot of time like, all right, like how about I'll try to record some videos or, you know, I want to get into content creation around that time.

I always find it fascinating. Uh, we were talking a little bit earlier, a mutual friend of ours, uh, Dave Sedia, who's been on the show. Uh, his product Recut came out of kind of the same squirrel moment of I he wanted to create content, but in order to create content, you have to build a tool to help you build the content.

of course you have to.

I feel like, you know, just developers in general make horrible entrepreneurs in this case, because we always want to build the tools and we worry about the tools and the technology more than we do the actual product.

And it's funny. It doesn't stop because I even have like so many like custom tools that I've built to help me with speak flow now. So like, I guess, I guess deep, I guess just layer on layer on top of like, well, I want to do that before I do that, I have to do X, Y, and Z. And so I have a whole meta stack of stuff on top of speak flow. Yeah.

there anything in the stack of tools you've built for speak flow that You think could be their own products by themselves.

Um, specifically around like just customer support, um, that became such a big thing. I think just the nature of the product, um, is very accessible. Um, so I get a lot of people that kind of come in and kick the tires, have questions, and I'm happy to talk to customers about it.

And you said speak flow. So it started as what was it? Teleprompter dot me

It was called

original name of it.

dot me. Yeah.

Okay. And that was a free product with a mailing list. What pushed you to start charging for it as a product?

I just needed an idea. Like I had tried so many. Products. Um, and that one was free and it seemed like it was too little to charge for like, it was just like all my tools. Like, and I have a couple, like I have like swole dot fitness. I don't even know if that's still alive, but like during the pandemic, I wanted like an interval timer. Cause I was really into like hit workouts, um, high, high intensity interval training, right? So you would need like, okay, I'm going to do.

What was the process? You rebuilt the tool and then you just, you started charging for it afterwards.

So, um, the first version was like just plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, like no build, no compilers, it was literally like index. html. And I think I had like the JavaScript in the HTML file, even like it was a very simple setup. Um, there was no like user system or anything like that. Um, and then when I decided to rebuild it, I was, I think I tried like buy me a coffee to see like, Hey, I'm working on this new thing.

You had to do all the, the lifting yourself. It's why you had to build so many tools for supporting SpeakFlow.

I think that's just a force of habit. Yeah,

just kind of the timeline of SpeakFlow. How far are we from when you made your first dollar from it?

it's kind of hard to say I want the range of like three or four years. I don't recall exactly, but it's been a couple of years now for sure.

Now, and then this whole time you're working a full time job. How much would you say? So you obviously work in your full time job. How much time are you devoting to speak flow as, as a side thing? Is it kind of your primary side thing, or were you doing other things at the same time?

No, honestly, like I've had like a lot of products. Like I do music, um, like I release music. Um, Like on distros, uh, I've gotten a couple syncs with shows with music. Uh, I do photography. Um, Client work like shooting family. I love like doing like family portraits and stuff So, um, I don't do it as much anymore But like around that time, um, I was like really distracted by a lot of stuff with the kids and like, like online magazines, I had a thing called a rebel, like a Twitter bot.

Eventually you had to get to the point where you quit your job at Apple and I'm assuming speak flow was a major part of that decision of going full time are not really full time, but going full time for yourself and quitting your day job. What was the criteria kind of held yourself to to lead up to that moment where you put in your notice?

Um, it was probably about two years ago when I really started getting like, maybe I tend to get like obsessive about things. Um, but like, I, it was like the building public thing was like in full swing, like the whole like indie hacker community, um, product tent. I think product was maybe even a little bit before that, but just, there was a lot of like energy around like SAS and build your own thing and all that kind of stuff. So that's when I decided like, okay, I have to focus.

And I think more testament, you're in California. It's not like you're leaving in, uh, for lack of a better term, like podunk

Yeah.

States, like Midwest where there's nothing, uh, where the cost of living is in like 10, 000 a year. It's not like you're a, Way below your means you're, you're living in, let's just say a state that usually requires a higher, higher cost of living

Yeah. Yeah.

doing really well to maintain that status quo that you had previously at a fairly large. Like Silicon Valley company. Um, so I, so you're doing well. And so is that income just kind of, not like talking numbers or anything, but like the, the income is that primarily from speak flow or is it also the combination of the other things you're doing on the, on the side?

Um, it's a mix. It's definitely like, I will say a huge chunk of it, probably like 80, 90 percent plus is just speak flow, but I still, um, do music. Uh, I don't really do photography as much anymore, but I definitely have like consulting clients that just like linger, like, you know, like you have like the people that just, you can't, yeah. So I don't take on new clients, but I definitely have people who are like, you know, that. Um, they're just like, I've had those clients for years.

What's the ideal scenario for you. Like if you had to choose how you wake up every day, are you living that now? Or what's, uh, is there anything you would change?

I make enough, right? Like if I don't make any more, if it's people, it doesn't grow anymore. Like I'm definitely like solid, like. I'm happy enough. Like we did the remodel before I quit on my house. So like we have enough space. We have enough money Uh, I live in south central so I maybe would want to live in a better area But even like now like it's fine. I grew up here. Like it's not like it is in the movies. Um, uh, yeah No, I I would say i'm pretty much living it.

Yeah. So is Speakflow in particular where you see yourself working for the next, say five years, 10 years, or are there other initiatives you have on your list that you'd like to, to go off and work on?

I want to try the like VC backed route. Um, and just, I don't know, it's weird. Cause I feel like I tend to get pushed back when I like talk to my friends about the idea, but it was like, I just want to try it. Right. Like that's the whole thing is like, so I tried the job thing. I tried the self employed thing and VC is like self employed in general, but like having like a team running a team, getting management experience, um, you know, being a CEO.

So Speakflow. It's just you, right? Uh, do you have any contractors or employees that work for you with speak flow

Yeah. So I have, it's me and then I have. Like two part time contractors and one person is kind of like graphic design. He's he's really hard. I hired my best friend. So like, he's like genius. I always say he's the smartest person I know. Um, and he just has a really wide skill set. So he could do like graphic design, product thinking systems, design thinking. Um, Brilliant dude. And then I have my sister who's customer support and she's a stay at home mom. So she has plenty of time.

were good? If you were to go the V. C. Route with speak flow, what's the first thing you would want to hire higher to help with? What? What would the V. C. Help you with?

Um, it would be, I mean, it would be with a separate idea for sure. Um, not speak flow, but

Okay, going a different route.

Yeah, it would be like a different, and I have ideas, um, that I'm playing around with in regards to that, but I really would just want to use that as an excuse to like, learn from like, hire like a head of marketing and see what they do compared to like, how I, you know, what I do with speak floor, like, um, hire like a architect level software engineer. Like, I'm like, I'm senior level, but there's still plenty enough that I don't know. And I would love to like, talk about, but that's like.

Yeah. I fully understand. There's something about having that partner that you have a Yeah. Like a mutual goal. You just want the product to succeed. You want it to grow bigger, better. And, uh, like Slack groups and mutual friends. They're great, but they don't have that mutual, uh, success goal that you have for yourself and they're not thinking about long term. They're thinking about just answering your question. Um, and having that person on the team that goes, I have a great idea.

I mean, I find that it's usually like the context, like you get folks that like care, right? Like, like you're in the same, um, like Slack group and it might be like. You, I could ask you something and I know you care genuinely about my problem, but you don't have the context of why I might do a certain thing or like really how I like to work or like the company history, where we're going and all that kind of stuff.

just be careful when you take the VC. Don't go off and build the tool to build the thing for the VC. You gotta be careful. I don't think they like that.

Exactly. Yeah.

Corey, I think you had mentioned earlier that you had worked on a bunch of other little things kind of leading up to eventually starting and moving forward with speak flow. Uh, can you talk about some of the things that You have either failed on or things that started working, but you decided not to work on anymore.

Yeah. I've had a lot of failures. Uh, the first thing I think I launched when I was like 14 was called, uh, uh, it's like an image uploader. I forgot the name of it. It was an image uploader, but I learned a lesson about like, why you don't put an image uploader for free up on the internet. Basically. Um, it was just like, Trashed and you know, people avoiding all sorts of crap to it. Um, I think it got hacked is why I ended up shutting out.

Sounds like nowadays you could do Dolly with a 3D printer and you just say, all right, come up with an ID idea and then like draw. Just draw the picture, and then someone's there to collect all the pictures. And maybe that's the

I wanted to relaunch it this year. And that was an idea that was like using the dolly thing, but I was like, I wasn't sure if like the appeal of it was the fact that it was like. Like on the Instagram, we were showing like, look, we're drawing it right now. It's just us. And it would be random too. Like you couldn't order a specific one. It would just be like, whatever we drew, that's what you get. People will post them on Instagram. Yeah.

really think it's the novelty of it. Like there's the business that sends potato messages, the people. So it's like something written on a potato, like it's. Not a scalable business. Like they probably have a bunch of people writing the same message or two on, on a bunch of potatoes, but it's the, it's the novelty of it. So in a couple months, we're not going to hear about that, that business anymore.

Yeah. Yeah.

like, has that kind of helped you? I am sure with Speakflow, now you kind of have the reoccurring revenue. Does that help a lot in the, the motivation to continue what you're doing?

Yeah. I mean, I'm, I really like it in terms of like helping other people do it. So for example, my brother is a guitarist and, um, he's launching some more like products, like digital products, physical products, but I helped him set up like an online store and he made like 1, 000 from like, um, a guitar pack is called like, so he sells like basically like a guitar pack that other producers can use like in their productions and that did super well. So like helping kind of like.

When we were doing a product a long time ago, I used to love the, the. Regular emails you get from Stripe that says, this is your payouts coming. And this is how much your payouts can be. I'm like, yes, that's the best email.

Yeah, for sure.

already taken the fees out. You know, I get, you know, I get enough money for a, a big Mac at McDonald's and I'm feeling good about this.

Yeah. It's funny because things start to like, uh, you start to budget for things like in terms of how much like you're like, how much you bring it in. Right. So it'd be like, well, I want that. It seems expensive. It's like, that's, that's like a week. That's like a week of speak flow. I could do that. That becomes like your new measurement of money as well. Yeah.

Well, Corey, uh, just kind of wrapping things up. Is there anything you like to promote other than a speak flow? We'll drop it in our show notes.

Not really social media. I follow me. I'm like, I'm trying to like, I'm, I'm pretty quiet on social media, but this year, one of my goals is to like, start like being on more podcasts, being more public about stuff. So definitely follow me is at I am Corey G on everything. I'm on blue sky, uh, X, Instagram, uh, threads. I got a blog. I am core g. com. Uh, my Spotify is Corey G. You could follow me, check out my music on there.

Just, uh, put it on repeat and you get a couple of pennies. Right.

yeah. A couple, couple of fractions of a penny. There you go.

yeah. All right. We'll do our best.

Yeah,

Well, Corey, it was a pleasure chatting with you. And like I tell everyone, we'll have to have you back in a year or so, and just kind of see where everything is and give the community a checkup.

yeah. I'm

I really appreciate you having you on the show.

All right. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Everyone else, thank you for listening to the multi threaded income podcast and we'll see you next week.