SL080: Using SpeakerHub To Get More Speaking Gigs

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:

• Andras Baneth's Website

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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 Today's episode was sponsored by speakers you the online community for speakers and if you're serious about your speaking career then you can join us because you membership program. I'll speak as you members receive private one on one coaching with me hundreds of hours of training content access to a global community to help them launch and build a profitable business around their speaking message and expertise. So just head over to SpeakersU.com to learn more.

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