Sep 17, 2020
Using SpeakerHub To Get More Speaking Gigs
James Taylor interviews Andras Baneth and they talked about Using SpeakerHub To Get More Speaking Gigs
In today's episode Andras Baneth they talk about Using SpeakerHub To Get More Speaking Gigs
Andras Baneth is a speaker and the founder of SpeakerHub, an online platform that connects speakers with companies and event organizers.
What we cover:
- The speaker marketplace
- How SpeakerHub can help you get speaking gigs
- Niching down
Resources:
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Read full transcript at https://speakersu.com/using-speakerhub-to-get-more-speaking-gigs-sl080/
James Taylor
Hi, it's James Taylor, founder of SpeakersU. Today's episode was first
aired as part of International Speakers Summit the world's largest
online event for professional speakers. And if you'd like to access
the full video version, as well as in depth sessions with over 150
top speakers, then I've got a very special offer for you. Just go
to InternationalSpeakersSummit.com,
where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit.
Yep, that's right 150 of the world's top speakers sharing their
insights, strategies and tactics on how to launch grow and build a
successful speaking business. So just go to InternationalSpeakersSummit.com
but not before you listen to today's episode.
Hey there, it's James Taylor and I'm delighted today to be joined by Andras Baneth. undress is a speaker and the founder of speaker hub, an online platform that connects speakers with companies and event organizers and I actually use speak hub and the International speaker summit. Speaker was one of our very first partners in wrote when we first had the idea of kind of putting the To get answers with the first guy I called, and we had a conversation about it. So yeah, let's let's do this. This is gonna be lots of fun. So it's my great pleasure to have Angus with us today. So welcome.
Andras Baneth
Thanks so much. Thanks so much for having your show. Pleasure to be
here. I love the whole concept of speaker summit and very nice
initiative to share best practices ideas, goalie.
James Taylor
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun playing here. So um, let's talk about
you know, where did it all begin for you so your your, your I
mentioned, you're a speaker, you're an entrepreneur, you have kind
of serial entrepreneur, you have a number of different businesses
as well. When did the speaking part begin? And then how did the
transition happen into actually finding speaker hub?
Andras Baneth
Yeah, I I actually got into speaking pretty say accidentally, as I
wasn't aware that I want to be a speaker. I wasn't aware of what it
means to be a speaker. And I'm still obviously learning about it,
but I started teaching Colleagues, students and doing workshops on
different topics mostly by the European Union several years ago.
And then I actually it became more more than just a hobby when I
started running professional workshops, and giving relatively large
scale presentations to audiences of a couple hundred people. So
that's when I got the gist of it and say, that's what I got very
interested in what it means to be a professional speaker. And then
in my current role, not just a speaker, a founder, but in sort of,
say, my day job. I have been organizing several dozen conferences
each year. And I myself speak at many events and run a lot of
workshops. And that's where the idea of speaker hub came from. When
I started wondering, is there a platform where I could get more
visibility as a speaker or as an emerging speaker and also to find
opportunities where I could pitch myself. And then on the other
side speaker how being a marketplace not a bureau, I was looking
for ways where event betters can source speakers on all levels,
whether it's an emerging speaker or someone who's relatively new to
speaking, but have a subject matter expertise, or someone who's
more established, but may be less visible to event writers in
Europe if the person happens to be American or other parts of the
world. So I wanted to create a global platform where this is very
smooth and easy to have that supply and demand meet. And when
James Taylor
did you see that they can have gaps in the market? Obviously,
there's, there's kind of other obviously last speaker bureaus.
There's loser speaker bureaus out there. Some are very good, some
are less so. But where did you see the role of speaker hub fitting
in that overall marketplace that was going on?
Andras Baneth
Well, we never looked at us ourselves as bureau because bureaus are
actually partners. of ours, not many, but we do have quite a few
and various other associations. But we wanted to create a space
where we don't have a business model that is built on a commission
fee. We want it to empower speakers and, and model it more like
LinkedIn than a classic euro or agency model. So we really want to
be a very in what is a very broad and welcoming platform to
speakers of all levels of expertise, and bureaus as well as
organizers. So we welcome the whole range of of professionals and
those who are up and coming or the beginning of their career.
James Taylor
And in those kind of early days as you were starting to research
about the challenges, both the speakers and also event organizers.
What are those 2am problems that each of them have? There's two
different groups, what are the thing that we can wake up worrying
about and trying and trying to solve and and how did how did really
can speak how Look taken help with those.
Andras Baneth
It's the first time I hear this nice expression, but I'm probably
gonna steal it, then some copyright the 2am problem. It's a really
good one. I think the speakers really I think their number one
concern is, is really finding their niche or niche if you prefer
the American way of where they want to position themselves. And
that's obviously number one. But then comes the next point of how
can they market themselves? How can they make themselves more
visible and interesting to event planners? So we've published over
100, blog posts and articles and best practices and interviews and
various content pieces to answer that question, and try to dissect
it up to down to the to the most. Let's say the tiniest details to
look at presentation techniques all the way to pitching themselves
or whether they should speak for free or not. And that's an
evergreen question something we can Come back to so we're trying to
provide very very good practical pieces of advice to speakers. When
it comes to organizers I think the number one question and that's
that's associated business problem we're trying to tackle the
number one questions organizers have is can I trust this person?
And obviously it's a very broad topic of of trust, but trust in the
sense Can I trust that this person has the skill the ability and
the knowledge to to while an audience and once the answer is yes
comes everything else are they easy to work with? Are they
flexible? What about their budget? What about their credentials and
everything else? So this is the the the question we try to answer
by providing all the tools on our platform on speaker specifically,
but even beyond speaker of any speaker once to answer these
questions when they are applying for an event. So to showcase
testimonials or or reviews, they want to showcase a video to prove
how they are on stage. They want to provide External links or
publications to show that they are subject matter experts. So there
are many elements to speaker's credibility. And we're trying to get
to that.
James Taylor
I guess where the power of that is obviously, most speakers like
99% of speakers will have their own website with their own speaker
page on their own website and everything. But it does for them, the
event planner site does involve going to lots of different places
and going here, there and everywhere to find all those. So I guess
like like any good marketplaces like Upwork, if you think about,
you know, outsourcing, it kind of brings you kind of actors that,
that place to allow, you know, the exchange of ideas, information,
knowledge, and opportunities as well as kind of going back and
forth. One of the things I noticed that I thought was really
interesting was and this is from the event planners, I like, do it
of organized conferences as well. And, for me, I always found it
very challenging the amount of inbound, coming in all the time how
to sort and sift, you know, we didn't that's the event and then
you'd get so many people kind of coming in. And it was never just
an easy way of being able to kind of have this it was coming as
emails, it was coming in his facebook messages, there was all kinds
of different ways that were coming in, I noticed that you have kind
of built some tools there for for the event organizers to help
them, you know, better do that whole process of getting those those
proposals in from different speakers.
Andras Baneth
Yeah, that's right. And as you mentioned, I think especially there
are two challenges or two problems there. One is managing the sheer
volume of applicants to an event so if you've ever organized
anything relatively large scale and especially if you put out an
open call for speakers, you know that you're going to be inundated
with with applicants, which is great, but then comes up. Problem
number two is everybody sends in their pitch or links that are
profiled in various in various different ways very different
packaging. So it's very hard to compare apples apples with apples
and you end up having some people sending an Excel sheet and
another person just pointing to their LinkedIn profile. So it's
hard to really compare them in an efficient manner. So that's the
other thing we were trying to do is, is we not only give a platform
for speakers to showcase themselves, but event planners can put up
a clover speaker on our own platform, so speaker up directly, and
they can manage the applicants just like Upwork and many other
platforms of that kind. So then they see all the applicants in in a
relatively standardized manner, which again, some speakers might
challenge that and say, Hey, I'm not a standardized speaker. I'm
very different from others, which obviously, is is very much
respected. It's about the application. It's a fingerprint of
resumes, having a relatively standard format, so it's easy to see
who's the best fit. So we're providing that that listing and that
those tools where the event planners can truly parse through the
applicants do or shortlist reach out to the ones that they want to
engage or enter into a dialogue with, and especially we're helping
the mouth Federer's find the most relevant speakers. So speakers
would have specific keywords on their profile, they would have
specific description about what they talk about, and a lot of other
pieces of information that the manufacturers can sort of show if
the speaker says, Well, I don't speak for anything less than
$5,000. Well, that again, and even better, who has that budget
could easily find those speakers, but if they put it out better
only has a much more limited budget, or maybe no budget at all,
they're not going to bother that person by asking them. So it's
we're trying to optimize that experience that everybody can find
the best fit both of the organizer side and the speaker side as
well.
James Taylor
So this might might be maybe the more controversial aspects of any
marketplace. I think about some like Uber for example, it It
definitely puts the buyer in the strongest position because they
have much more information, usually much more openness of
information to be able to make comparisons as well. And I'm
wondering I saw this happen within the music industry companies
like Sonic bids for example. It created a really great marketplace
that allowed bands in that case to create their one pagers and a
promotional site and also festivals and events to be able to say
hey, we're looking for speakers. And something something quickly
happened there. Which was then the the festivals in that case the
events said actually, you know, we're going to turn it from just
being this is a cost for us to like to try and find these potential
speakers to this is a rep potential revenue stream. So the they
didn't say okay in order to pitch us to consider you for your for
our, our festival, you know, you have to go through the this
platform that we use which is Sonic beds, and you have to pay X
amount in order to be pitched for the for the for the festival. You
Now can you see that happening with obviously with this speaking is
such a broad is the the high end keynote is one side. And also
you've got things like platforms because people that that will
often speak for free in order to sell something on the back of the
back end of it as well. But can you see that happening in that in
that more transparent type of marketplace?
Andras Baneth
Right. I think it's a very interesting, interesting comparison. But
I think the speaking business is somewhat different. And I'll tell
you why I think thing this way and feel free to challenge that. But
in my view, obviously, there is one discussion around the format.
So you mentioned it could be a keynote, it could be a workshop, it
could be an after read or speech. It could be any sort of
inspirational talk. It could be a district meeting of an
association, there are many, many formats. I think what's more
important though, is really the substance. So if you happen to be a
technology company that deals with startups are even more narrow,
that say startups in Africa and you're putting together an event
on. Here's a recent example of her failing forward. And it's a nice
concept though, despite failing in the startup unit or long
lessons, and perhaps her next venture just succeeds. So for
instance, if you're an event planner and putting together an event
for startups in Africa about failed initiatives, which eventually
succeeded or followed by some success, I think that's much more
specific. So finding speakers for that specific topic is is more,
let's say, more unique, and then I don't think that speakers would
be expected or could be expected or speakers would be happy to pay
for a bit. It's at the minimum, they could be granted a platform
and to speak for free. But obviously, the more specific their
expertise is, the more let's say respected professionals. They are
obviously that massively affects their feed. First of all, they can
charge a fee. And that is, effectively, I think, most speakers do
have the expectation that there's going to be a lot of inbound
requests for them to speak. And at least most of the speakers I've
worked with or my experience, it's more, it's more an exception
than the rule. So this is not about you passively, just sitting
around putting up a couple of videos and and hoping for the phone
to ring if they need to proactively get that started. And of
course, if they give a great speech, and they they, they slowly but
surely build up their speaker persona and a profile that it can
snowball into, into something like that, and we're trying to help
speakers kickstart it and not just those at the beginning of their
careers because we had some pretty high profile speakers getting
hired through us but still having that discovery when an event that
is looking for Someone knew someone they may not have heard of, and
not necessarily just a person who has the best search engine
optimization or runs the most creative Google ads. So someone that
they might just find serendipitously. But really someone they can
find the instructor man or someone they may not have heard of, but
could be a great addition or brings color to their next event.
James Taylor
So we've been speaking about Speak up, and why don't we dive in.
And because I think it'll all become much clearer to people once
they kind of get in there and they see how it works. And if people
haven't been on the speaker hub before, I think it's you can kind
of open your eyes up to things.
Andras Baneth
So basically, the idea is is really geared towards the band
planners who come to the site first. And we make it very easy for
them to search and while as a slogan says, find the perfect speaker
and making sure that they understand that we don't charge a
commission fee so it's easy for them to find to reach out to and
enter in dialogue with speakers. So we have a couple of feature
speakers here who have pretty robust profiles or achievements and
that's randomly selected from from a pool of speakers. And then we
have various organizations for working with or have worked with or
have source speakers or have speakers themselves. And then here we
here is our sort of knowledge base where we showcase either success
stories and a lot of a lot of thought leadership pieces on say
stablishing yourself as a credible speaker or topics such as that's
a how to use YouTube Canva SlideShare to read market, repurpose
your presentation. So there's a lot of useful articles and content
pieces that you can find by going back so for speakers, they are
listed on this page where on the left side, you can really search
by the look at country topics, what they are available for the type
of events As they speak, so let's say you're looking for a German
speaker, you can just filter according to that someone who's got a
fee between 1000 $505,000. And then I have all the speakers listed
here. So this is on the organizer side, mostly, but then on the
speaker setup, how, because I presume most of the participants in
your event are speakers. I think this is the most important part
where the speakers can really showcase their best self, and making
sure that they look interesting and convincing enough for the event
planners, so you can have a nice profile, which is really geared
towards your speaker persona. So in that sense, it's different from
LinkedIn where well, let me let me take another speaker who's got a
even more robust profile. So for instance, a speaker whose whose
LinkedIn profile have been fairly generic But on the speaker how
they can really talk about what makes them unique as a speaker. So
they can provide here all the languages they are available to
present in their fee. Obviously, it's not carpet stole so it gives
just a rough indication of how much they are going to charge. Then
you have a short description of the background. The most important
part is truly the media section. The one you see here in the
middle, where I am very much encourage and the system also nudges
speakers to upload a video, at least one video and they can upload
photos, they can upload a one sheet and presentations if they have
some to showcase and then the next day is the other very important
part of testimonials as third party validation that truly shows
that this person is not just claiming to be a rock star, but they
actually do a great job and we have our way of verifying these
testimonials to make sure ga credentials hold. And then other
speakers and organizers can recommend another kind of speaker or
add to testimonial that we can then verify. So it's basically the
whole concept is what is their topic of expertise? Are they good on
stage? That's what the video answers have debuted Endor supported
by others, and what makes them unique as a as a speaker
representative. And we're very transparent, very, very open. We
give all speakers the possibility to point to their website and our
social media links. So we're not trying to monopolize their
membership in any way because Exactly. Our business model is not to
keep a closed loop for the transaction between the speaker and the
organizer. It's really about providing more visibility to our
speaker community.
James Taylor
And one of the things I like about this as well the the
testimonials part, so I know having done it myself, you You think
that the way that works is you enter the testimony and you have to
put the email address I think it is of the person that's giving the
testimonial. So you you go and check the office and you check to
make sure and there's so I think what will be interesting as time
goes on, as you build more and more of these is almost going to be
like a TripAdvisor for speakers. It's gonna, it's gonna help people
kind of see the good now, in any case, you know, that's there's,
there's there's dance, I know that the best speakers are always
very, very active, trying to get those testimonials, whether it's
video written, audio, anything, that's one of the biggest thing
that we try and do.
Andras Baneth
Yeah, I'll show you my my profile. That's something we just rolled
out. It's just a tiny little development, but I find it pretty
cute, is you can now embed tweets and videos as testimonial or
someone else. So here I gave a TEDx talk a couple of weeks ago, or
about a month ago. And here you can see that this is an embedded
tweet of feedback. About my talk, which I think it's a, it's a nice
little feature because again, it's all about third party validation
that all the non planners want to know that you are not just
claiming to be good, but you actually have been positively reviewed
by others. So there could be a tweet and you could even add video
testimonial into into that part. So that's that's exactly the
direction we're going. So for instance, if I scroll down, okay,
it's not displayed right now. But now we added a new section where
you can share documents with your audience. So you can share your
presentation, or point them to various links as a follow up to your
talk or to your workshop. And very soon you and it can be password
protected, or it can be public out in the open. And when you share
that link with the audience, what you can do is actually ask for a
testimonial from the people who download those content pieces. So
let's say you give a talk and you share presentation with the
audience and you in return so to say you ask for a gospel
testimonial from the ones who accept that page. And another thing
reading again, helping speaker trying to understand their needs is
really too They can even add a lead generation for. So for
instance, you've just given a great talk or you are live on stage
and you share the document your slides with the audience and say
that for them to access it, they need to provide their email and
their and their name. So you can follow our build marketing list as
a speaker so you can follow up as a result.
James Taylor
And we'll be fine. All the speakers that have been most successful
in using the platform have had the greatest response, what are some
of the key things that they do when they're building their platform
that you just have to have them if you want a successful
profile?
Andras Baneth
Well, the most important thing is really to have a robust profile.
So fill in all the information and make sure that it's as complete
as possible, but by far the most important Are is the media
section. So if you have photos showing you on stage, you have
videos, what are just an intro or your or your showreel or whatever
it may be have those those, that's what the organizers will be
looking at first and foremost, and then making sure that it's
again, it's really robust. And, and a very common mistake that I
see for many, many speakers who join speaker out is they're not
specific enough about the business value they can deliver to
organizers. So they might say, well, I talk about I'm a
motivational speaker and I talk about energizing multinational
teams. And I think at least in my experience, it might be a little
too broad and a little too abstract. So an organizer comes and
says, Oh, that's the kind of speech you give. A lot of other people
give that to. So what makes you unique and it does require a lot of
crafting, and Thinking to be to be put into it, because that's how
you will stand up.
James Taylor
And I think I mean, that's no different from, you know, the because
in the world of speaking where you have, so an organizer has so
many different choices of speakers, you have to have that USP, you
have to have that thing that stands out. And this is just like,
this is just the online version of it really, there's gonna be
going on, but you always have to be very, very clear about what the
value proposition need the USP. I'm looking here just now like as I
speak at my eyes are instantly drawn to the organizers tab there.
So that shows that how that works.
Andras Baneth
So basically, perhaps even before the organizer that showed the
event, because the events we used to call that call for speakers
because that's what it is, but it was just a lot of words. So we we
agreed on just calling it events. So these are not simply event
listings that you would find on several dozens of other websites,
but these are effectively open calls for speakers and We get a lot
of organizers who find us and they put their calls on our site. And
we also proactively reach out or find call for speakers that we
aggregate and put everything in here. So we want to be this one
stop shop for speakers to come to and say, Okay, I'm looking for an
event, perhaps I'm traveling to say, to Ukraine, or I'm traveling
to, to British Columbia, and is there something out there. Or it
could be in a way that I'm just looking to scale my speaking
business or I'm trying to get more expertise or more platforms
where I can speak at So what could be a good fit for my expertise
and my availability, and just generally what I'm what I'm looking
for, so that's what we put it here. And then you can see the left
side are different ways to filter down to parse through that to go
through those those different events. Now, admittedly, the vast
majority of events we have here are free, and again, it's a whole
new discussion and I'm sure many of your guests will be discussing
that whether you should speak for free or not. We just have a very
active discussion on that on the need to speak for BSP per LinkedIn
group of givings just, it's a very vibrant community, our guests a
great input so much give great input on the pros and cons are
different considerations. So again, just because an event is free,
it can bring so much to a speaker depending on where they are in
their in their career or what what exactly they are trying to
achieve or how they are monetizing their speaking activity, whether
there's something in the back or sell books or
James Taylor
there could be many other ways. I mean, I always think, you know,
the, the, I think about it as a it's not an either or, in terms of
the free and the paid speaking I'll I will sometimes do free ones
for two reasons. One is if I I'm working on a new keynote, and I
just want to get out there and try out and improve upon it. And and
for me, you know, I do that and and that's a good way for me to
kind of test test material out. The other way is if I think that
there's potential, either back of the room sales, or if it was an
event where I think there's going to be lots of people that will
potentially hire me for other keynotes like, like LSA, if it was an
association of festival organizers or conference organizers, that's
an obvious one, but there's obviously lots of other types as well.
I'm interested here so that that free or paid? I think there's
Yeah, we could we could go off with a completely other
conversation. There's, well, there's so people should go to the to
that LinkedIn group because I know that there is a lot of
conversation about that side of things as well. One of the things I
noticed on the event types, you have conference, you have
moderators, workshops, you also have webinars, and for me, it's
because we've had in the summit, this has been a huge growth area
for them. He Like paid webinars or free webinars where there's an
offer at the end of some sort, or any any any plans to to extend
next I know a lot of people that run you know, they want to be even
like myself like later on today, I'm gonna be running an event with
from my audience, my members. And I'm I'm always looking for people
to bring in as guests for the webinars and these are my paid
community they've already paid. So I'm looking to do that. So do
you have any plans to look at extending and an increasing number of
online stages that people can speak on?
Andras Baneth
Absolutely, absolutely. So we're looking at all directions of how
to provide more opportunities for speakers to pace themselves and
obviously for for organizers, we encourage them and I encourage you
and everyone is organizing, putting together a webinar or an online
event to use speaker and find speakers. So where we're all about
Obviously scaling the platform, but also tying the connections and
making the bond between the speakers and the organizer stronger. So
absolutely, we're very happy to to look into that as time goes by.
And then just going back to your previous question regarding the
organizers. So as you see, each of these event would be put on by
organizer. And obviously, there are many organizers who put out
different events and advertise those on speaker up. And then
sometimes the organizer runs the speaker sourcing on our platform.
Sometimes they prefer to use their own website or their own special
forms. So that's entirely flexible and up to them. But in terms of
even finding organizers that you might want to reach out to or
connect with, we have here I think, several hundreds of organizers
and as I scroll down, I see I'm seeing the letter A and it goes all
through the alphabet. So there are really a lot of organizers who
come on board.
James Taylor
And then I noticed you also have the eight agency. So how did it so
you're getting more now speak up for speaker bureaus, agencies that
represent other speakers.
Andras Baneth
Yeah, that again, so it's it's various, not necessarily speaker
agency, some are indie agencies, some are professional associations
or some trade associations. So for instance, the ICS do, it's a,
it's a PR trade association, and some others are some various clubs
or other other entities. So what happens for them, we look at them
as partners, and whether they are speaker bureaus or other type of
agency or Association. And what happens is they can list their
members who are available for speaking and then they get this
dedicated page with their nice logo. And, and we usually work out
some sort of a deal because they bring in a lot of speakers. So we
give some special discount to upgrading the members or some sort of
deal that we work out with them. And it's also possible What we
call a white label. And then if someone's running an agency or any
sort of association organization, they can have this listing and
with the search features plugged into their very own website with
their branded colors with their own system under their own domain.
So then similar what you and I are doing for for the ISS over to
Speaker side of displaying the speakers without the visitors having
to go to Speaker hub directly, but it's all happening on their own
website
James Taylor
that's going on. I'm looking at that, you know, I think there's so
many ways you could use that even as a speaker I'm thinking if I
was if I if my topic was self leadership as an example, you could
almost kind of build your own little mini agency many bureau of
other you know, because most people in your in your field you know
most of your competitors and as people are speaking on that and
say, listen, let's bring everyone together hammers on one place.
You know, people can see all the different speakers. And we can we
can also, you know, because people are gonna be looking for this
this field as an easy way for everyone to see who the main speakers
in this particular field. So you could almost get very niche. You
mean you I can imagine, listen, you know, my wife is vegan. For
example, I can imagine, you know, speakers that speak to vegan,
there's loads of vegan every weekend, that seems to be some vegan
conference vegan event be happening somewhere. And you could
actually kind of build your own little community of fellow speakers
or speak on your topic.
Andras Baneth
Yeah, you're just a source of many great ideas. So indeed, we're
also exploring how this could be best utilized. You know, the fun
thing is that these what we call speaker cards, the one you see
here, and these are animated, which for some reason, probably
because of the screenshare does want to move but it's a little
animated. And all of these can be just plugged just like a YouTube
video or a SlideShare like embedded on external websites. So if
you're putting together a couple For us or events, you can just
grab someone's speaker card and just plug it into your system and
showcase them as your as your guest. So there could be many ways
that this can be utilized. And even we're going to start working
with conference platforms, because we've just developed an API
that's Morford important geeks among your listeners. But I know
that you're you're very much into into software and things. So you
would certainly know how that would work. So basically connecting
that to existing platforms where we share data in a structured way.
So we wrote about trying to give more visibility to our speakers
and put that in front of more event planners and conference
organizers as we go along. And
James Taylor
just I'm looking at this, just now notice, like you have like
premium on some of these cards. Yeah, you know, there's another one
you had celebrity on one of the cards. Oh, yeah. Well, what are the
different levels? How do those work? How do you get those different
levels
Andras Baneth
right now we essentially have three levels. So Anyone can join the
platform. It's completely open. We're not doing any prior vetting.
That's why we provide so many ways that a speaker could showcase
their credibility. So the event planners will do that vetting when
they find a speaker's profile, but essentially, there's a free open
membership. And then you can choose to upgrade to a premium level
or VIP level. And these include different services additional
services. So if you're a premium, you can have a more robust
speaker profile, because you can upload a limited number of videos
and photos and and other content. And you can also have access to
some premium content. For instance, a draft speaker contract so
when you're hired, then you can download the contract and that's
available to the to the pay premium members and the VIP gives
access. Among the events, the paying events are are listed are
shown to the VIP members. And then you mentioned celebrity and it's
something we're sort of experimenting with And we are basically
creating a couple of sample profiles for well known global
speakers. And I wish they came directly to the platform, but that's
not the case. But for instance, you take Richard Branson, Richard
Branson, is listed as a celebrity, and we just redirect whoever
might find him through us to Deputy Speaker Bureau. So we're not
taking anyone's content. But we want to create a couple of
interesting lists of let's say, the world's top 50 motivational
speakers or the world's top 50 let's say vegan, vegan vegan
speakers, if just take sticking to your previous example. So we're
trying to have these catered lists and have some celebrity profiles
to showcase and it's an experiment you know, we're we're a startup.
Still, we've been on the market for a year and a half so not not
completely new but still very early in our in our existence. So
we're experimenting with different different approaches and
different
James Taylor
waste. I think I noticed early one of the celebrities is Dan Pena,
who's actually one of my neighbors. As I was going through speaking
earlier, and I know you know, a lot of speakers that are on there
as well. And it's great. I mean, it's a community. And I also
notice at the top there, you have a thing called skill camp. So
Andras Baneth
yes, pickup is again, we just put it out there. Here's my photo, as
it happens to be. It's basically more than the blog and it's a it's
going a little deeper into the how of the speaking profession and
this speaking as a business, so we had a webinar series a couple
months ago. So we have those included here where you can have the
slides, the recording and the full transcript of each of these
webinars. And then here's at the bottom you have the speaker
contract and we are continuously adding more content to this so
that again, it's some are available for everyone, some PCs. are
available for the premium and VIP level. So we're trying to build
here a almost like a trading pores or knowledge repository that the
members can can access.
James Taylor
I think that's really smart me I think about brands like HubSpot,
for example CRM, right? they they they came I'm part of the reason
that they grew so fast was because, you know, they they created
this great educational content. And it really really, I mean, I, I
downloaded loads of their ebooks and read loads, it went on losing
their webinars as well, because they just added that additional
content. So this is great, because you're putting all this
educational content together, putting these some of these webinars
together as well. So that's, that's absolutely fantastic. So you've
got everything here. So to get started, people can just sign up the
if they can sign up for for free here as well and start kind of
building building the kind of profiles Yeah, anything else that we
should be kind of aware of as a speakers that you know, it'd be
It'd be worth pointing out at this stage.
Andras Baneth
But I think speakers are are realizing how to best position
themselves and how to best market themselves in this very, very
role speaking industry. So some speakers just focus on specific
markets, for instance, if they are more motivational speaking every
or they might be just running workshops on project management, and
they also speakers of some sort, not necessarily what you would
immediately think about as a public speaker, but they are doing
speaking as a business. So I think, really finding, just asking
those very, very basic fundamental questions of which target
audience or which target market what is the key topic or a handful
of topics that they want to talk about, and then making that very
clear value proposition into their profile to be discoverable and
at the same time, being very proactive and finding Gaining activity
organizers conferences and events to to be visible. And then
there's certainly a lot more depth to it. And many of your guests
will who gave give great advice, but much better than I can on how
to formulate a speaking proposition or pitch, what is the best way
to create your demo video, or how to keep your topics fresh, and
that is that the shelf life doesn't kill it after a couple of
months or years. So there are just so many sub topics we could talk
about creating that very strong value proposition is probably the
first half.
James Taylor
And as I'm looking at, I mean, you mentioned like having those
lists, I think, you know, one of the top key keyword phrases as a
speaker is going to be something like top leadership speakers, for
example, that will be an obvious one. So looking at this as a as a
speaker, and also as a marketer. I'm also thinking actually, what I
could do is you could, you could put together like a list of the
top like a query To the list of 25, the top speakers in your area,
you could put it in, put it together or your own your own website.
And then each of those have been having them linked to their sport
speaker hub profiles. And it actually gives you a really good
opportunity to reach out to each of those individual speakers and
build relationships with them as well. Yeah, you can have a lot of
fun with this or such great, we're gonna have a link here on this
page. So people can just click here, and that's going to take you
through to the speaker hub site. And you can just get started
building that that free a free account and also, you know, for me,
I think one of the most useful things when I got started in using
speak hub, we're just looking around at the other profiles of some
of my my fellow speakers speak in the same area as me and thinking
like how can I differentiate myself in that sometimes it's the the
video sometimes it's the blurb, the text or the photos or other
things that you kind of add on to it. So yeah, absolutely. One of I
think you've built an amazing marketplace here and I can really see
this is becoming a Growing me it's only a year and a half old.
Foster is already has already grown. Anything else. If anyone wants
to know anything else about speak Harbaugh, if there are any kind
of questions, and if there's any way that they should go or any way
they should reach out the best way,
Andras Baneth
maybe maybe just one word because I know that's a very it's a
crucial point when it comes to being on a platform like this. And
some speakers might say, Well, I don't want to be where everyone
else is, I want to be some someplace else. But the way I look at it
is it's it's not speakers are are not really competing with each
other. But they are there are just so many other factors that go
into a speaker selection, that you you may not be direct
competitors with, with 99% of the others because you're talking
about expertise is different because they might be looking for
someone who has a certain qualification or a background, or they
might be looking for someone who's a native speaker or On the
contrary, someone is not a native speaker but brings a different
perspective. So all these factors come in and if you Compared to,
let's say, eBay, it's the, the tennis racket is not very competing
with the with, with a coke bottle. And that's not competing with
buying a new house. These are all very, very different products,
even though they might be the same marketplace. And again, events
are looking for that very unique perspective. So this you don't
necessarily need to distinguish yourself from the others. As much
as you just need to be as a standalone, great speaker who provides
a great value proposition.
James Taylor
That's what you need to do. Listen, well. Thank you so much for
kind of coming on today. And also thank you for supporting
international speakers. I know you and I had this conversation a
few months back and I said, I've got this idea. What do you think
about this, you get great feedback on it. And and here we are
now.
Andras Baneth
Yeah, that's very thoughtful. I truly appreciate that. And how you
put that together and the speaker lineup and I'm truly honored to
be to be part of have such a prestigious speaker lineup and thank
you so much for the opportunity I'm really happy to be part of
this.
James Taylor
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