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About Us
I first began learning about public speaking through my high school forensics (speech and debate) program and a couple of great teachers. (Since then I've spoken in many other venues, volunteer and otherwise.) But I had a problem when I finished high school, a problem you'll probably recognize: Unfortunately, I learned that things are a bit more expensive when your parents aren't paying for you. So I started this website.
When I first started out on the web, I decided to take the so-called "blogging" path. I registered my domain name, bought hosting, set up WordPress blogging software, wrote my first few posts... and that was it. I had no direction. So I gathered together my thoughts, outlined a plan, wrote more for the website... and had no traffic. As I did more research, I realized my mistake. Eventually I stumbled on a web page that made sense to me, and, depressingly, explained my failures. The first line below the title read, "Should You Full Blog? For Most Small Business People... "Full-Blogging" Is the Wrong Choice to Build a Business." And then it went on to explain when blogging works. My website didn't fit. Great. (The funny thing about the web page I found is that it was also about why their site/business building service (Site Build It, SBI) was so great. But this page wasn't just an ad, thought that was part of that - it actually had useful information! Click Blog or Build to go there.)
After reading other commentary that verified what I read on the SBI Blog or Build page, I decided I was going about things wrong. So I registered a new domain name, this time more business-oriented, and set it up with the hosting that I'd purchased for my blog. I went onto my hosting control panel... and realized I didn't know a lick of html. Doh. So I taught myself bits and pieces, and with a lot of time and effort built a decent-looking website. But whenever I wanted to do something new, I had to learn everything all over again, because my slapdash knowledge wasn't always cut out for managing a full-scale website. And I didn't have much of a topic, either. Something public-speaking-ish, but what specifically was I going to write about? I didn't know which keywords would bring traffic, I didn't know anything about search engine optimization, I didn't know anything at all about website building, and above all... I couldn't make money!
Now I had a problem. I'd spent a couple hundred dollars with nothing to show for it. I was out of school and going to and expensive university in the fall, and didn't have a job to pay for it all. In desperation, I went back to SBI. They promised a lot. Get ranked highly with the search engines, make enough money to quit your job, and more. I really, really wanted to believe their claims (like this video, 2 1/2 minutes long)... but I couldn't. No way, I thought. But they had hundreds of top 1% websites on hundreds of different topics (topics people chose because they knew and loved them), and people were even making videos about how SBI changed their lives! Not only that, but they offered a full-money-back guarantee. So I jumped. I took the last of my graduation money and bought SBI. Now it was all or nothing. I didn't take the money back offer. It wasn't easy, it took a lot of work, but now I'm done with a year of college and going to live in another country speaking another language for two years, enabled by SBI, through this website. Thanks for visiting. Keep on speaking.
Return from About Us to Speech-Time.com
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Hey everyone, I'm Devin Bean and I run this website and am a student at Harvard University. Read on and I'll tell you how I got into public speaking and websites. 
