I started this blog a year ago, in July 2025. My youngest two kids were about to leave for college, and I knew I would have time to devote to a side project: becoming a professional speaker, focusing on leadership development.

I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight. I came up with a plan and have been steadily working on that plan. This is my assessment of the last year’s efforts.

 

July 2025. My first posts were on July 4, 2025 (First Blog Post and The Importance & Clarity Targets). Initially, I didn’t even tell anyone what I was doing. It was top secret for the first three months. I wanted to see if I would like it and stick with it. It was also a small test of courage. Putting yourself out there is scary. I want to feel the fear and do it anyway. My strategy was to take small steps that were scary but not too scary.

If I want to be a speaker, I need to have something to say. The blog was to get me into the habit of thinking, writing, and sharing my ideas.

 

October 2025. I started to go public, telling friends what I was doing. The blog was still very basic. I started asking for opportunities to speak to friends’ teams. I had opportunities to do so in October and November. That was very encouraging.

 

January 2026. At this point, I had been taking consistent steps and had proven to myself that I was committed. I paid some friends to create a professional website (scottstonehouse.com). It turned out great and was launched in March of 2026.

 

March 2026. With the launch of the website, I now had something that looked like a professional speaker’s website. This gave me the confidence to take another public step: I began sharing my posts on LinkedIn. The first one was on March 19, 2026. The goal was to use the posts to get attention, build credibility, and direct people to the website where some would decide, “We should hire this guy to come speak to our company, organization, team.” It is a passive strategy (relying on someone to see it and act on it), but it was another step.

 

July 2026. By the end of the first year, I had created 106 posts, an average of two per week.

 

I will share one more step that I have taken, then I will grade myself and share a pre-mortem exercise I did.

 

August 2026. Earlier this year, I signed up for Jon Acuff’s Stage & Page workshop. Jon is one of my favorite speakers and authors. This is an opportunity to spend two days with him, his team, and 20 other people to learn how he built his speaking and writing business. It is next week. I can’t wait!

 

Overall, I would give myself a B-.
(1) I got started. That is a significant step!
(2) I have been consistent. That is also really important. Many people have dreams. Few start. Fewer keep going.
(3) However, what I have been consistent at is writing blog posts. That is good. It’s helpful. But my goal isn’t to be a blogger or a writer. I want to be a speaker, and I haven’t made much progress getting reps doing that in companies. (*I do continue to have opportunities to preach and teach at my home church and others. I am very thankful for those opportunities, but that isn’t the goal.)

Overall, I am encouraged, but I do feel a little antsy. It is time to make real progress. Over the next year, that must be the focus: speaking opportunities. Rep after rep after rep.

 

Finally, as part of my review process, I did a pre-mortem. In a post-mortem, doctors look at a dead body and try to determine the cause of death. There are similar processes in business. Why did this project fail? Why did this company die? A pre-mortem is considering the project or effort ahead of time and asking, “If we imagine a year from now and this has failed, what would be the most likely reasons it failed?” This helps identify potential problems ahead of time so they can be addressed and, hopefully, prevent the failure.

So, if two to three years from now my plans to become a professional speaker have failed, what are the most likely reasons it has failed?

1. I didn’t ask for enough speaking opportunities.
2. I didn’t learn how to ask/close deals to speak.

I believe my failure would be on the business side, not the speaking side. It would be due to a lack of courage (asking) or humility (learning). It would not be because of ability or effort.

 

Thus ends my first biz year review. If you made it this far, WOW! Thank you for reading!