Outspoken Oath: The Speakers

Written by Tori, our COO:

The entire brainstorming process for our Oath to both our Clients and our Speakers was a fun practice in fully formulating what we stand for as an agency, but the Speaker Oath, in particular, was even more exciting because one of our speakers was actually facilitating the conversation. We were so lucky to have Soon Yu guide us through this process to help differentiate ourselves from our competitors and friends at other agencies. He gave us great insights as to why he was attracted to working with our agency and helped ensure we really embrace the name and personality of our company and our roster in order to formulate a Speaker Oath that reflected us wholly.

It is essential to the success of the relationship between the speaker and the agency (and especially the sales team) to believe in the speaker and believe in what their message represents. If we do not think the message serves the greater good and provides interesting, educational and/or entertaining information, it becomes very obvious, very quickly that we’re going to have a hard time selling that message to our clients. Sure, we have differing opinions on what speakers should join our roster, and sometimes it isn’t always a good fit, but we work with group consensus and our gut to try our best to do right by any speaker to give it our best shot.

Knowing they’re connected to good people often makes these representation conversations no-brainers. And we find allowing our speakers to connect with each other for personal or professional purposes just fuels this ecosystem of connectedness and collaboration.

When we sign a speaker, we are committed to advocating for what they stand for. We commit plenty of "sweat equity" building out their speaking brand, prospecting new clients that we feel would be a great fit or are on their goal list, and giving space to hit the reset button if we’re not getting it right. We never promise a minimum number of bookings; there’s no crystal ball over here, Dorothy. But we are always willing to protect their message and certainly have walked away from substantial income because it was a poor fit for the speaker. Silencing a speaker (I mean, literally the antithesis of the root word here) or editing their message too much (event confidentiality aside) sometimes requires us to draw a line in the sand and walk away. But it’s worth it to protect their credibility and integrity (and ours)!

We’ve been so fortunate to build our roster of speakers through warm leads and friendships from within as well as fans of our speakers. Our speakers have been so gracious to make introductions to wonderful speakers, whether they're on the roster now or it wasn’t a right fit (or bandwidth was limited) at the time. Knowing they’re connected to good people often makes these representation conversations no-brainers. And we find allowing our speakers to connect with each other for personal or professional purposes just fuels this ecosystem of connectedness and collaboration. It’s especially fulfilling to see the roster support each other on a book launch, project or personal celebration!

One of the best parts of creating a company while based in NYC has been the opportunity to personally meet so many of our speakers as they’ve passed through the city. It’s not something that could’ve happened as easily while living elsewhere. And not to say you cannot make it work in this remote world we’re especially living in now, but building that in-person connection has helped us create some memorable bonding experiences with our speakers. As much as we take our job very seriously, we love to be able to text a speaker and ask where they got those shoes or commiserate over a glass of wine. We want this experience to be fun and know that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. This isn’t a marriage, but rather a friendship. Whether they stay or go in the long term, we’re always cheering them on and so grateful to have had that time together.