Working on deals for Mark Scharenbroich, Steve Gilliland, Peter Diamandis, Kevin Coupe, Tony Hsieh, Lynne Lancaster, David Stillman, Seth Mattison, and Tommy Spaulding...
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Ideas for International Affairs Speakers
One of the most important takeaways of any event or meeting is perspective for the audience - offering an audience a chance to understand what’s going on in the world that affects their industry, their business, their life.
Leading Authorities represents the most forward thinking speakers on our global community. Engage these experts in a conversation, create a panel, hire a moderator, or invite them to give a keynote on the forces changing our world and how they will shape your industry in the years to come.
Former Commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe and former National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones is a commanding presence with a strong vision and keen insights. He assesses how world events are developing and what international events mean for the nation.
Former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley provides audiences with a backstage pass to the world of national decision-making. His speeches are intellectual and compelling whether he's focusing on the big political movements that affect the country as a whole or drilling down to the individual country or region where the international news of the day is happening.
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and former Director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden dissects the political situations in the hot spots in every corner of the world, analyzing the tumultuous global environment and what it all means for the American people and America's interests.
Former Commander of U.S. and International Forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal discusses the new challenges facing America in a globalized world, the proliferation of non-state actors, and the advance of information technology and instantaneous communication. He shares a thorough assessment of U.S. security and what the future will hold.
Former Undersecretary of State Ambassador Nick Burns speaks with candor and passion about his experiences at the forefront of American foreign policy, what works and what doesn't in America's foreign relations, and what the future holds for America's position on the world stage.
Former Governor of Pennsylvania and First Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge draws from high-profile experience to enlighten audiences on the state of the globe and what the future holds for the global marketplace.
If you are interested in learning more about these speakers or if you would like me to put together some recommendations on another topic, please drop me a note or give me a call at 202-721-7675
Leading Authorities represents the most forward thinking speakers on our global community. Engage these experts in a conversation, create a panel, hire a moderator, or invite them to give a keynote on the forces changing our world and how they will shape your industry in the years to come.
Former Commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe and former National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones is a commanding presence with a strong vision and keen insights. He assesses how world events are developing and what international events mean for the nation.
Former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley provides audiences with a backstage pass to the world of national decision-making. His speeches are intellectual and compelling whether he's focusing on the big political movements that affect the country as a whole or drilling down to the individual country or region where the international news of the day is happening.
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and former Director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden dissects the political situations in the hot spots in every corner of the world, analyzing the tumultuous global environment and what it all means for the American people and America's interests.
Former Commander of U.S. and International Forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal discusses the new challenges facing America in a globalized world, the proliferation of non-state actors, and the advance of information technology and instantaneous communication. He shares a thorough assessment of U.S. security and what the future will hold.
Former Undersecretary of State Ambassador Nick Burns speaks with candor and passion about his experiences at the forefront of American foreign policy, what works and what doesn't in America's foreign relations, and what the future holds for America's position on the world stage.
Former Governor of Pennsylvania and First Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge draws from high-profile experience to enlighten audiences on the state of the globe and what the future holds for the global marketplace.
If you are interested in learning more about these speakers or if you would like me to put together some recommendations on another topic, please drop me a note or give me a call at 202-721-7675
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Business Books on My Desk
A few books that have made it to my desk and have lasted many rounds of cleansing
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, Stephen R. Covey
World, Inc.
by Bruce Piasecki
Wealth Management in the New Economy: Investor Strategies for Growing, Protecting and Transferring Wealth
by Norbert M. Mindel, Sarah E. Sleight
Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive
by Jason Jennings
Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance
by Marcus Buckingham
The Big Picture: Essential Business Lessons from the Movies
by Kevin Coupe, Michael Sansolo
The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers
by Bill Conaty, Ram Charan
The Squam Lake Report: Fixing the Financial System
by Kenneth R. French, Martin N. Baily, John Y. Campbell, John H. Cochrane, Douglas W. Diamond, Darrell Duffie, Anil K. Kashyap, Frederic S. Mishkin, Raghuram G. Rajan, David S. Scharfstein, Robert J. Shiller, Hyun Song Shin, Matthew J. Slaughter, Jeremy C. Stein, Rene M. Stulz
Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
by Gary Vaynerchuk
The Executive Guide to High-Impact Talent Management: Powerful Tools for Leveraging a Changing Workforce
by David DeLong, Steve Trautman
Getting China and India Right: Strategies for Leveraging the World's Fastest Growing Economies for Global Advantage
by Anil K. Gupta, Haiyan Wang
Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It
by Marshall Goldsmith
I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted
by Nick Bilton
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
by Michael Lewis
Saul has read this book
Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track--and Keeping It There
by Les McKeown
It's Not Just Who You Know: Transform Your Life (and Your Organization) by Turning Colleagues and Contacts into Lasting, Genuine Relationships
by Tommy Spaulding, Ken Blanchard
Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler
Green Recovery: Get Lean, Get Smart, and Emerge from the Downturn on Top
by Andrew Winston
Monday, November 1, 2010
Business Lessons from the Movies - Keynote Speaker Kevin Coupe
I just met Kevin Coupe, co-author of a hot new book called The Big Picture; Essential Business Lessons from the Movies. Kevin has been very active on the speaking circuit already, delivering as many as 10 speeches in a month to various well known corporations. I didn't have a chance to view the entire presentation but he did walk me through a short version which I found very interesting.
His book (and speech) covers business lessons showcased in a variety of hollywood movies. Kevin and Michael have done a great job choosing choice scenes to explore further. It must have been quite entertaining and enjoyable to put this together. So here is the short list of movies covered (among others), can you guess what the lessons are?
His book (and speech) covers business lessons showcased in a variety of hollywood movies. Kevin and Michael have done a great job choosing choice scenes to explore further. It must have been quite entertaining and enjoyable to put this together. So here is the short list of movies covered (among others), can you guess what the lessons are?
- Local Hero
- Bridge on the River Kwai
- Hoosiers
- Tin Cup
- Tucker
- American Gangster
- Big Night
- The Hunt for Red October (not listed in the book)
- Jaws
- The Godfather
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Next Generation of Speakers Bureaus
The internet has impacted the speaking industry in many ways. For one, access to talent has become increasingly transparent. Ten years ago a speakers bureau may have successfully relied upon, and benefited greatly from, its employees' and speakers' collective rolodexes for access to top speakers - and consequently may have developed a reason for clients to rely on them. As the internet grew, the value of this protected rolodex diminished as consumers gained easier direct access to talent through Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Secondly, the rise of blogging and social media has provided tech savvy speakers the opportunity to promote themselves online and gain even greater visibility without the need of a bureau to promote them; speakers such as Gary Vaynerchuk and Chris Brogan have even written books about how to best leverage these web publishing tools for self-promotion and speaking opportunities. For a speakers bureau, the days of protecting information about how to find access to speakers are gone.
For a speakers bureau to win business today and remain competitive, there are two angles on which to focus:
First, do an excellent job at covering the basics. You will put yourself in an excellent position to win business by providing excellent recommendations for your client, providing these recommendations swiftly and accurately, and including all necessary tools for your client to best review your ideas amongst their internal team. Be sure to provide up-to-date fee information, availability, and quality video of each speaker’s recent speeches. Gather all necessary information needed (When is their next committee meeting? When are they looking to make a decision? Who is the final decision maker? etc...) from the client in order to follow up with them in a timely and effective manner. Call your client prior to and immediately after their next scheduled committee meeting and take note of any potential changes in their direction leading up to, or as a result of, their meeting. This attention to detail will allow you the opportunity to re-align your recommendations and have the first shot at winning any potential business. Repeat this process until your client's team has decided (with your help) which speaker would make the most sense for their conference's or meeting's desired outcome. If you have protected yourself throughout this process by keeping all potential speakers in the loop about your client's progress, you should soon be in a position to secure the booking for the speaker and your client.
Secondly, you must have an engine dedicated to the recruitment of new talent. Traditionally, in order to be effective in talent recruitment your team needs to keep a close eye on current events, and again - move quickly. When the BP oil spill made international headlines earlier this year, former CEO of Shell Oil, founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy , and author of Why We Hate the Oil Companies, John Hofmeister became a sought after panelist and speaker for news outlets and conferences. Adding new talent to your agency’s roster is extremely important in today's competitive space ,as it not only drives inquiries to your account reps (therefore providing more opportunities to deliver excellent customer service), but it also raises your awareness inside the marketplace and differentiates your team from the hundreds of mom-and-pop speakers bureaus.
Executing these two facets well (along with quality branding, marketing, leadership, and relationships) should provide the engine needed to remain competitive.
However, with that being said, I have seen indicators for new platforms of speaking bureaus all together.
If an organization can find ways to automate activities required for either providing quality service or building a talent roster, we may see some interesting advancements in the industry.
There are two sites that come to mind when I think about this development: 1) SpeakerSite and 2) SpeakerWiki. Both have found ways to automate the development of their talent rosters and put the publishing tools in the hands of the speakers or their end clients.
SpeakerSite is a Ning based social networking platform dedicated to the career advancement of speakers. The Ning platform lends itself naturally to this idea and SpeakerSite founder Artie Isaac has done a tremendous job customizing the platform to mesh with the industry.
The advantages: For speakers looking to gain more exposure in the marketplace and build a book of business, this seems like a great place to start. Artie's slogan “Because everyone has a message. And every message has an audience” plays well into this idea. The old days of speakers having to beat on the doors of bureaus in order to be listed on bureau websites, or for a chance to pitch the bureaus on why they should recommend the speaker to the bureau's clients, are fading into the past. SpeakerSite has gained exposure within industry publications, and Ning provides web 2.0 tools for the speakers to easily share their profiles and activity elsewhere on the internet. There is a menu item to "book a speaker" across the top of the website, and if you are a client looking for inexpensive speakers to fill out your conference, this may be a source to add to your list.
The drawbacks: Although providing speakers an opportunity to boost their exposure in a collective effort may benefit the group and ultimately bring in business, the "behind the scenes" mechanics of booking a speaker and providing customer service is not any different than if you were to deal with a traditional speakers bureau. In other words, the automation on SpeakerSite clearly has everything to do with the networking of speakers, and nothing to do with the mechanics of securing a booking itself or providing quality service.
SpeakerWiki uses the open source platform OpenWiki (similar to MediaWiki which is used to power Wikipedia.org) and the idea behind SpeakerWiki is to accelerate the advancement of industry transparency around fees, contact information, and quality of individuals on the speaking circuit.
The advantages: SpeakerWiki founder, Andrew Brooks, has spent some time in the agency world and the efficient structure of his site shows it. SpeakerWiki's welcome message states:
Speaker Wiki is a free-content speaker encyclopedia that has been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Speaker Wiki exists to help speakers and event planners by providing clearer information about speakers and building stronger community.
I have seen this site build momentum, and as it continues to snowball, it may become an effective industry resource and collective talent roster for clients, speakers, and agents. Although there is no invitation on the site to submit an inquiry for actually booking a speaker -- and no indication elsewhere that it has any interest in functioning as a speakers bureau -- the organic growth of the site demonstrates the value in targeting an unfed appetite in the industry for people to contribute to a collective talent roster.
The drawbacks: SpeakerWiki is a site that greatly upsets me. Not because it's bad, but because it is so good at what it does, and because I wanted to do something like this last year but was unable to do so for multiple reasons (I guess there's a bit of the green monster coming out).
So where does this leave us?
The speakers bureau of the future should marry self-generated talent rosters (as seen on Speakerwiki and Speakersite) with a system that automates the booking process. This includes serving up recommendations and reviews from multiple speaking agencies and sources, while also empowering the end users to take the drivers seat as it relates to the logistical necessities of securing talent, (sourcing, reviewing, checking availablity, submitting offers, negotiating contracts, making payments, and promoting the event) thereby creating an environment where the account reps deliver excellent customer service by helping the clients to navigate an already user friendly experience.
For a speakers bureau to win business today and remain competitive, there are two angles on which to focus:
First, do an excellent job at covering the basics. You will put yourself in an excellent position to win business by providing excellent recommendations for your client, providing these recommendations swiftly and accurately, and including all necessary tools for your client to best review your ideas amongst their internal team. Be sure to provide up-to-date fee information, availability, and quality video of each speaker’s recent speeches. Gather all necessary information needed (When is their next committee meeting? When are they looking to make a decision? Who is the final decision maker? etc...) from the client in order to follow up with them in a timely and effective manner. Call your client prior to and immediately after their next scheduled committee meeting and take note of any potential changes in their direction leading up to, or as a result of, their meeting. This attention to detail will allow you the opportunity to re-align your recommendations and have the first shot at winning any potential business. Repeat this process until your client's team has decided (with your help) which speaker would make the most sense for their conference's or meeting's desired outcome. If you have protected yourself throughout this process by keeping all potential speakers in the loop about your client's progress, you should soon be in a position to secure the booking for the speaker and your client.
Secondly, you must have an engine dedicated to the recruitment of new talent. Traditionally, in order to be effective in talent recruitment your team needs to keep a close eye on current events, and again - move quickly. When the BP oil spill made international headlines earlier this year, former CEO of Shell Oil, founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy , and author of Why We Hate the Oil Companies, John Hofmeister became a sought after panelist and speaker for news outlets and conferences. Adding new talent to your agency’s roster is extremely important in today's competitive space ,as it not only drives inquiries to your account reps (therefore providing more opportunities to deliver excellent customer service), but it also raises your awareness inside the marketplace and differentiates your team from the hundreds of mom-and-pop speakers bureaus.
Executing these two facets well (along with quality branding, marketing, leadership, and relationships) should provide the engine needed to remain competitive.
However, with that being said, I have seen indicators for new platforms of speaking bureaus all together.
If an organization can find ways to automate activities required for either providing quality service or building a talent roster, we may see some interesting advancements in the industry.
There are two sites that come to mind when I think about this development: 1) SpeakerSite and 2) SpeakerWiki. Both have found ways to automate the development of their talent rosters and put the publishing tools in the hands of the speakers or their end clients.
SpeakerSite is a Ning based social networking platform dedicated to the career advancement of speakers. The Ning platform lends itself naturally to this idea and SpeakerSite founder Artie Isaac has done a tremendous job customizing the platform to mesh with the industry.
The advantages: For speakers looking to gain more exposure in the marketplace and build a book of business, this seems like a great place to start. Artie's slogan “Because everyone has a message. And every message has an audience” plays well into this idea. The old days of speakers having to beat on the doors of bureaus in order to be listed on bureau websites, or for a chance to pitch the bureaus on why they should recommend the speaker to the bureau's clients, are fading into the past. SpeakerSite has gained exposure within industry publications, and Ning provides web 2.0 tools for the speakers to easily share their profiles and activity elsewhere on the internet. There is a menu item to "book a speaker" across the top of the website, and if you are a client looking for inexpensive speakers to fill out your conference, this may be a source to add to your list.
The drawbacks: Although providing speakers an opportunity to boost their exposure in a collective effort may benefit the group and ultimately bring in business, the "behind the scenes" mechanics of booking a speaker and providing customer service is not any different than if you were to deal with a traditional speakers bureau. In other words, the automation on SpeakerSite clearly has everything to do with the networking of speakers, and nothing to do with the mechanics of securing a booking itself or providing quality service.
SpeakerWiki uses the open source platform OpenWiki (similar to MediaWiki which is used to power Wikipedia.org) and the idea behind SpeakerWiki is to accelerate the advancement of industry transparency around fees, contact information, and quality of individuals on the speaking circuit.
The advantages: SpeakerWiki founder, Andrew Brooks, has spent some time in the agency world and the efficient structure of his site shows it. SpeakerWiki's welcome message states:
Speaker Wiki is a free-content speaker encyclopedia that has been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Speaker Wiki exists to help speakers and event planners by providing clearer information about speakers and building stronger community.
I have seen this site build momentum, and as it continues to snowball, it may become an effective industry resource and collective talent roster for clients, speakers, and agents. Although there is no invitation on the site to submit an inquiry for actually booking a speaker -- and no indication elsewhere that it has any interest in functioning as a speakers bureau -- the organic growth of the site demonstrates the value in targeting an unfed appetite in the industry for people to contribute to a collective talent roster.
The drawbacks: SpeakerWiki is a site that greatly upsets me. Not because it's bad, but because it is so good at what it does, and because I wanted to do something like this last year but was unable to do so for multiple reasons (I guess there's a bit of the green monster coming out).
So where does this leave us?
The speakers bureau of the future should marry self-generated talent rosters (as seen on Speakerwiki and Speakersite) with a system that automates the booking process. This includes serving up recommendations and reviews from multiple speaking agencies and sources, while also empowering the end users to take the drivers seat as it relates to the logistical necessities of securing talent, (sourcing, reviewing, checking availablity, submitting offers, negotiating contracts, making payments, and promoting the event) thereby creating an environment where the account reps deliver excellent customer service by helping the clients to navigate an already user friendly experience.
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