Professional Speaking In The Time Of COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

Professional Speaking In The Time Of COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

As speakers and speaker bureaus see events, conferences and meetings cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus) we brought together a selection of speaking industry insiders to talk about the impacts, challenges and opportunities. 

Our guests included:

James Taylor of SpeakersU
Fredrik Haren of ProfessionalSpeaking.com (Singapore)
Saana Azzam of MENA Speakers Bureau (Dubai)
Maria Franzoni of MFL.Global Speakers Bureau (London)
Jane Atkinson of SpeakerLauncher.com (Toronto)

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Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor (00:00:04):

And we are live. Welcome. It’s James Taylor here. Thank you for coming and joining this live webinar. We have, data’s been a lot of interest in this. I think we have over about 500 people registered for this, so thank you very much for coming in as you are joining us today. I would love if you just put on your right hand side, we have the chat box in there. I’d love if you just say where you’re joining us from in the world. I just give us a little bit of a feel and we have a big global gathering of guests here today and also attendees. So that would just help us a little bit and also lets me know that you can hear us and see these. Okay. So just type in on the chat box on your right hand side where you’re joining us from in the world.

And uh, in just one minute, we’re going to get a start. I’ll, I’ll have everyone introduce themselves as well. So we’ve got folks joining us from Singapore, Minneapolis, UK, Denver, San Francisco, Germany, California, Belgium, Florida, keys, Tokyo. Welcome Tokyo. Sorry. Uh, Germany. Uh, yeah, so Santa Barbara look at this. Fantastic. Great. So I’m dreaming by putting all that you can hear us and see us. Okay. So let me, uh, very, um, first of all, welcome you here. This is, uh, uh, very kind of last minute webinar we decided to put together if I have, so last minute, I was sitting there on Saturday and I had the idea from seeing what was going on about Qubit 19 coronavirus. I sent one email to the guests that you have in front of you just now and they all came back saying yes, can’t be. And so I have to thank them so much for coming on and doing this and kind of sharing the word about this as well.

So the a, what we’re going to be doing in terms of format, we’re going to, I’m going to be asking some questions to the guests here and then you won’t have much time as possible to answer your questions. So please in the chapel style as you, as we starting to hear from our guests, please stop putting in what questions you have and all kind of moderate and all you have to ask those questions to the guest. I thought an interesting thing just to get us started is I’ll run a little poll here. You’ll see on your right hand side and let us know just now. How worried are you about cobot 19 Corona virus? I just want to get, we’re going to take the temperature of everyone here just now. So we’re looking at, so we’ve got not very worried, a little worried, rather worried, freaking out British slash American versions of Vista system.

Um, okay. So, um, I’m going to just let that run for just a moment. While that runs, let me introduce, uh, our guests very briefly, Albert, and really tell you about who they are and what they do. So going from East to West, we have Frederick Caren from joining us from Singapore. We have some Amazon joining us from Dubai. We have Maria friend-zone joining us from London, and we have Atkinson who would normally be joining us from Toronto based actually in Phoenix today. Um, and with that, the world, just if each of you would just like to kind of, uh, tell us a little bit about, uh, who you are and, uh, and just get a little bit baggage so we can understand can, while you’re on this today. So maybe Frederick if you’d like to go first.

Fredrik Haren (00:03:18):

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, hi everyone. I guess one reason I’m on this call is because I live in Singapore, one of the first countries to be hit at least outside one of the first times we hit outside China with a, uh, the girl virus. And, uh, so that’s, I’m going to give, try to give an Asian perspective. And I’m also then, uh, I’ve been a keynote speaker for 25 years, so I started in 1995 and I’ve seen a few, a few crisis over those 25 years. So I hope I can give some perspective on the ups and downs of the speaking industry over well, two and a half decades.

Saana Azzam (00:03:53):

Fantastic. So I’ll move on from here. Hi, everybody sent us some with you from Dubai and I head up Mina speakers. It’s a speakers Bureau that represents the middle East and operates largely in the middle East. And so we have just been interacting with the Corona at this point in time. It was lagging a little bit and we’ve been staying a lot of action happening in the past couple of days. So I’ll be so excited to be sharing some insights and what I believe our opportunities in this moment.

Maria Franzoni (00:04:22):

I think I’m next. Uh, Maria friend-zone, uh, MFL global speaker Bureau and we are also part of the London speaker Bureau group of um, companies. Um, so as long as speaker Bureau has 25 offices in 18 countries. So although I’m sort of speaking from a UK and European perspective, um, we have had some experience also internationally with uh, uh, the uh, covert 19.

Jane Atkinson (00:04:47):

So we’re so, um, well organised here. I’m so impressed with us. I’m Jane Atkinson and I run a company called speaker launcher. We help, uh, professional speakers, uh, run the businesses of their dreams. And I’m, I’m actually coming at this from both someone who coaches speakers, but also someone who’s running my own event, which starts tomorrow in Phoenix. And I would love to give you a little bit of perspective about that.

Speaker 6 (00:05:17):

[inaudible]

James Taylor (00:05:17):

that’s great. So we actually had, we have an event organiser here as well too. And I know, I know we have just looking at some of the attendees are on the coming here today. Uh, we have a mixture, obviously mostly speakers, but we also have people here from speaker bureaus are attending and also event organisers as well. So everyone’s in your own very good company. Now, uh, let me, I’ll tell you that the result of our poll, a 28%, I’m not very worried at all. 45% are a little worried, 20% are rather worried and 5% of freaking out, a little worried at the moment. Okay. So having said, uh, if we can get into I, my name’s James Taylor. If you don’t know me, I’m uh, I’m a keynote speaker and on creativity, innovation, AI animals. So the founder of speakers, you and international speakers summit. So my first question I guess is for Frederick, tell us, cause you would’ve been, you been effected probably first being in st Paul and I know you, you’ve lived in China, you speak, uh, insure a lot. How did you, how was your business not to be affected by [inaudible] in 19 and when did you start to see those effects?

Fredrik Haren (00:06:24):

Yeah, so, so I’m going to say the good news, Stan, is that, uh, Singapore has been living with this for weeks, uh, of over a month. And uh, we freaked out I think all of the months ago. One day we didn’t have any toilet paper in the, what’s happened? What are you reading in the rest of the world? Now we, it’s weeks ago we had that, the good news is that now Singapore is almost back to normal. Meaning I was just in a shopping mall today and check and foot traffic. It’s just back to how it was before the crisis and launch restaurants are open and everything, which is great. The bad news is that, uh, that has not, uh, fear lingers. And, uh, the, the booking of the event, uh, events are still being cancelled and the booking of the events have not started to come back. And I actually went to a restaurant that was hit, one of the places where the coronavirus was, was found in Singapore and I went there like three weeks after he was found and when the restaurant was still empty. So it takes a while, even before people had stopped freaking out before everything goes back to normal. So I would say when it comes to this worried, not worried, um, uh, I’m quite cautious. I would say this is the biggest crisis, the speaking industry I’ve seen in my 25 years. Uh, [inaudible] from where I’m sitting.

James Taylor (00:07:39):

I know you also have the role of, I know you were a president of Asia professional speakers, Singapore, so you’re very well connected with speakers across Asia as well in everyone, you know. And so taking things out of Singapore, other speakers, I know you have a lot of speakers in Malaysia, for example, other parts of Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia. Is it pretty much the same for everyone there?

Fredrik Haren (00:08:02):

Oh, me personally, I have had a speaking engagement council in Vietnam before Vietnam. Had the other single case in, in Thailand, in uh, uh, in India and uh, of course in Singapore, uh, all over, all over Asia. And yeah.

James Taylor (00:08:20):

So you said you knew that you’d been in a, obviously we’ve had shocks to the system in the past through, uh, September 11th and saws and mowers as well. Where do you see this playing out over the next three, six, 12 months? Well, you’re not, are you recording this? I should also preface it because I’m just looking at the chat here. Someone said, is the advice that we’re giving health-related or is it business related? So none of us adults as I need to put this array out of stock. This is primarily business.

Fredrik Haren (00:08:54):

Okay. Yeah. So the

James Taylor (00:08:55):

way, uh, so, uh, as I said, I’ve never seen a dip like this and I never seen a dip like this globally. That’s the big difference. I’ve, I just got kind speed. So, so my whole strategy was then when this happened was, okay, I’m going to S I’m going to move my focus away from Asia and focus on Europe. So I got a bunch of speaking gigs in Europe and now they are, now they are being cancelled. So that strategy was wonderful for a week, for a month, and now it’s, it’s a wonderful anymore for that. That’s a huge thing. Uh, and I, I’m more, I’m not worried about the virus. I’m worried about the kind of economic effects of the virus. It’s hundreds of thousands of flights, cancel hotels, not 900,000 each time if people not coming to Maldives on vacation. And so on that that is, and that would, will create another dent in a people’s willingness to create events. So I, there’s a risk. This would be a double blow. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but I think it’s a big chance. And you mentioned, you know, trying to initially do that pivot to booking more stuff in Europe, moving away from Asia for a while, that obviously as as as it spreads, it kind of is less, less impactful. How are you actually spending this time then? How are you spending these, what is suddenly this kind of gap in the diary?

Fredrik Haren (00:10:10):

Okay. So I, uh, as I’m a pure keynote speaker, the only thing I do is keynotes. I don’t do anything else. So which means automatically, at least the way I’ve set up my business is I have always downtown. I have two, I have two months per year in the summer. And with my kids, I don’t do a single speech. I just, I had my kids for my summer vacation at about six, five, six weeks every winter. Uh, over Christmas I don’t do any speeches, so I’m used to this idea of having uptown uptime and downtime. So I just look at this as a, as an unexpected downtown downtime again and I, and when I haven’t, when I have my dime downtime, that’s when I do, I call it breathing in and breathing out. So when you’re speaking, you breathe, you’re breathing out, so you’re constantly delivering your message, but then you also need to breathe in and that’s when you do your research and your writing and I have been extreme.

Fredrik Haren (00:10:57):

I don’t think I’ve ever been more productive than I have the last month when you’re generating content because for the first time in a long time, I’m actually now given a time where the universe is telling me to do something, not because I chose to do it, so I feel like I better take advantage of the fact I’m not breathing metaphor again. You breathe in, you breathe out, no problem. The problem if you stopped breeding and that’s the danger when people just freeze as Oh shit, what’s going on? And they don’t do anything. Just hoping that trying to get speaking gigs that are not there and then whenever they starts again, you have nothing to show for what you did except being stressed and freaked out. I think that that’s, and that’s a danger I’ve seen in some speakers. I would highly recommend not doing that. Full speed ahead. I’m Swedish, the Vikings when the, this is a time to row.

James Taylor (00:11:48):

Um, now you’re mentioning you really just don’t often get the impacts in a and wasn’t gonna mention, cause obviously you and I full transparency, you and I work a lot together but me, I was due to be speaking for you next week in Abu Dhabi and that the day’s been postponed. I’m doing a date for you for one of your clients in Sunday in Riyadh. So we do a lot of stuff, but we’ve obviously noticed all the things starting to happen. So when did you first start to notice, how is it affecting your businesses? Cause especially cause you’re focused on the middle East.

Saana Azzam (00:12:17):

Yes, for sure. So there was definitely a lag and the middle is pretty much started taking action in the past few days. So it’s been business as usual, uh, and all of fab Ben and just right at the beginning of March and now things are slowing down and we were having cancellations and I spoken to my, you know, industry called the eggs and other people that head up agencies and everyone across the board is having cancellations or postponement. And so we are trying to push the narrative to have events postponed. Um, and talking about, you know, give us two date options, let’s have an event because the show must go on. If you’re having a product launch, if you’re having an event celebrating your, you know, your clients or customers, that should happen for our business regardless. It’s just a question of when and so, and, and every booking, we’re always talking about at least two dates where we’re checking with the speaker and the event organiser, you know, either we do it say in may or we do it in June.

Saana Azzam (00:13:15):

What we’re seeing right now is that it’s only an eight or this in the coming two weeks that things are being cancelled. Um, you know, middle East doesn’t work with a huge lead time. So anybody that’s worked here knows that, you know, it’s pretty much a hobby business in the sense of tomorrow we’re gonna have an event, bring somebody over ASAP and we have to figure it out. James, can you come over? Yes. No, that’s sort of a timeframe. And so that’s interesting though because it means the region is quite agile and so cancellations just happen. But the second things are clearing up, they’re just going to be just as quick on their feet to get going with the events. Um, I mean it’s an interesting time. I, I believe this is a great opportunity to win market share. It is a great opportunity to weed out those organisations that are not necessarily adding true value to their customers.

Saana Azzam (00:14:09):

And so we’re quite excited and, uh, we’re preparing full throttle once the season is up and running to be there and we’re still discussing with our clients, you know, what can we do next? What can we do is that, and we’re kind of pivoting from just events and speaking to either scaling down and doing more in house events companies or alternatively offering the B2C option, which is, you know, have the speaker consult your CEO about their strategy. And this is something we’re so used to. Um, you know, you have Ramadan that comes up as some of, you know, we have a one month long fasting period and so business goes, Nope, it just calms down. And normally this, we were expecting this to happen in April, but now it’s just happened in March with the Corona. And so things are happening earlier and we’re just having to pivot to our original plan but doing it earlier than expected.

Maria Franzoni (00:15:03):

And how do you see, cause obviously you’ve got in Dubai, you have Dubai expo coming up in October, starting October and that’s a huge amount of events and a lot of things can be going on for that as well. So is the feeling in the region that hopefully this is all kind of pastors by that point and it’s not going to affect or you know, what you’re getting affects in terms of your clients programming speakers or looking for things for, for Dubai expo.

Saana Azzam (00:15:24):

So if we look at the dates in may, everything is still set at mid April. Everything’s still set. It’s just a question Mark around the coming dates that are coming up now. So the mentality is the show must go on, we’re going to proceed, we have all these deliverables, we’re going to take all the necessary precautions in the countries. So one of the things we’ve seen is that, um, you know, universities and schools are shut down for a month as a protective measure and so they’re being incredibly proactive. Uh, but as far as dates and bouquets, it’s business as usual. Okay.

Maria Franzoni (00:16:02):

I like the, I like the agility. I’m, I’m, I’m interested in terms of that, the agility as well. Maria, what about yourself? So you have, obviously you have access to what’s going on in your space, so how, how’s that affecting your business, your speakers. But then you have this your purpose global network as you were saying. So what are you, is there any data that you can share with us? There’s a evidently how everyone else is being impacted. I was too early to have numbers really, but to, to give you some indication of what’s been going on. So, uh, we had some early cancellations around three weeks ago for events in Singapore because we work internationally. Um, and obviously China, we’ve got an office in China who was effective first. Um, and nothing’s happening there clearly. Um, but we’re seeing it probably in the last four or five days.

Maria Franzoni (00:16:50):

It has gone. People are panicked, companies have been panicking and they are all postponing or cancelling. Um, and what’s not helped is the fact that some of the larger companies are putting travel bands on their people. So it means if the people can’t travel, they can’t actually get to the conference. Therefore there’s not going to be an audience. Therefore, how can you run it? So that’s one thing. That’s a, that’s a problem. Um, couple of things that we’ve got going on here in the U K today. One of our airlines went into administration fly B, which is really sad, um, and inconvenient cause it’s one of the airports at Southampton that I like to use probably is going to have a lot of problems now. And they’ve said that part of the reason why they’ve gone into administration, they were having problems but they blamed the coronaviruses pushing them over the edge.

Maria Franzoni (00:17:39):

So we’re already seeing some economic um, uh, impact here in the UK. Um, we’ve also, for talking about Europe, seeing, um, Italy has been the worst effected in Europe so far and we’ve seen obviously events cancelled there and any planning cancelled there. But also on the other side where clients are trying to pursue bone or to plan events in the future in history, I’ve actually got speakers who are saying, listen, I’m not going to go until I know it’s a hundred percent safe. So what’s been announced today in Italy is that schools and universities are going to be closed for 10 days to try and delay further spread. What they haven’t thought about is though, if children are at home, any medical staff that have children are not going to be able to go to work because they’re going to have to look after their children.

Maria Franzoni (00:18:27):

And also Italians tend to, when they are left at home and the whole family is together, they think, great, let’s go to another part of Italy. Let’s go down South. It’s a lot warmer. So you’re potentially actually spreading it further in Italy. So I don’t know if the Italians have got this quite right and not very loyal of me being Italian, but I’m a bit worried about what’s happening. And then in the UK we’ve got some very contradictory advice from our our governments. So, so here’s what we had from the chief medical officer and he was saying we shouldn’t be panicking and cancelling events and conferences because in reality that’s they’re not going to cause any problems in terms of increasing the spread of the virus. However, what we should do is avoid pubs and avoid public transport. So what happens in conferences? You use public transport to get there.

Maria Franzoni (00:19:13):

Oh, what happens after conference? You go to a pub, you know, and are you not just as close in a conference when you’re networking and having drinks and socialising, are you not as close when you’re sitting? So we’ve got some really not great advice and the only real advice we’ve got is wash your hands for 20 seconds, sing happy birthday twice when you’re doing it. That’s all we’ve been told. So me personally, I’m not worried about that, about the coronavirus because I think it’s going to probably become endemic like flu. Uh, what I’m worried about is the overreaction of everybody, which could potentially take us into a global recession. Now I saw one of your posts earlier and you were talking about this lovely little clause that our speakers and speaker bureaus have in our contracts, which now come to the Fort, the fit force measurer caused the strange French phrase.

Maria Franzoni (00:20:03):

Um, can you tell us in terms of when you’re working with clients that signed the contract they are scheduled, how has that forced measure cause being enacted? And are you finding that there’s issues around either postponing days or using the force majeure clause? Yeah, I mean false mature is if you cannot do business, so if a company is putting a travel ban on that isn’t stopping you doing business. If a government says you are not allowed to run the events, then it is. So what happened to us in Singapore was that the government said you cannot run events over certain number of participants and our client had 700 participants and therefore they were told they were not allowed to run the event. That is false mature. You’re not. The government has said no. If you’re imposing it yourself and saying, I’m not going to allow you people to travel.

Maria Franzoni (00:20:50):

That’s not really a force. You’ve chosen Susan to do that. If you choose to, it’s a very fine line. But in the UK, unless false majorities in the contract and it States exactly what it means, it’s not withheld. But at the same time you have to be reasonable. So we aren’t able to treat everything every, we’re not able to treat everybody with a blanket decision and we’re going to, we’re not doing everything the same foam. We’re treating case by case. So if something cancels in Milan and the speaker is quite happy not to go to in the land, we don’t mind treating that as false Muslim money. But if a speaker’s counsel the day before they’ve done all the preparation and they’ve just decided actually, you know, we’re a bit uncertain, the events in London, they’re all UK people. There’s no reason to not run an event in London.

Maria Franzoni (00:21:33):

So therefore it’s a cancellation. So we’re having to treat everything on a case by case basis. So when you said, what are you doing with your downtime, that is no downtime, we’d been renegotiating 16 cancellations from last Friday, um, either to postpone cancel. So we’re spending our times renegotiating and trying to reach [inaudible]. And the problem you have there as well is who is going to say when it’s over? So if you look at SARS, I was working in the Bureau in when SARS happened. That was eight months before things settled down, but it was two years before the last sales case. Um, and this has gone RAF spread much more rapidly, fortunately with a, a lower mortality rate. But it’s been, there’s been many more deaths overall. So this is why it’s creating so much havoc. And I can see this going on potentially for two years.

James Taylor (00:22:22):

Wow. That’s, that’s, that’s, that’s a worrying thought. Jane, you mentioned that often. You’re in a, you’re in Phoenix just now because you’re actually running an event before you can train speakers on the business and the side of what they do. Uh, I know you had one speaker who just had to cancel because they were just really worried about travelling at this point as well. So I want to get your perspective as to in two ways. You wa how you dealing with all this as an event organiser and then you’re speaking with lots of speakers everyday as their coach. What advice are you giving to them and what you hearing?

Jane Atkinson (00:23:02):

Yeah, there’s so much to unpack there really, because, um, there’s a lot going on. It’s swirling all around and I think a F okay. So I’ll start from the person running a meeting. You know, there is a lot on the line for me. There’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 to $25,000. And I know that I have clients that that’s a drop in the bucket for, because they’ve been wiped out to the degree that’s much higher than that. But, um, so I can’t even imagine. What that helps me do is think about, wow, what about the people who are putting on million dollar 5 million, you know, $20 million meetings. They must be absolutely, um, going through panic. I think that people, so one person dropping out of our event, we can work with that. We can figure it out and have, um, you know, we’ll rearrange things.

Jane Atkinson (00:23:59):

We actually have a substitute who’s on our line here today and I’m, I’m very, very excited about it and it’s all gonna come together, but I don’t know for sure that everybody’s going to get on the plane and come. They may be nervous. Nobody has been infected in Phoenix yet. And so I’m hoping that is something that will be helpful. I’m grateful that we’re not in another place that has seen more, uh, the coal coast of California is, um, you know, they’re, they’re seeing more activity there than we are inland. So a few things about this, uh, the people who I think are going to be most effective, the people that I’m reaching out to right now, clients are the intermediate speakers. So our emerging speakers, I think they’re probably going to be okay because they’re mostly doing a lot of local business and they’re doing small audiences.

Jane Atkinson (00:24:54):

It’s the people that are working with a thousand people and more who are really going to be hit hard. I have a client, Ryan Estis, who I know will have a big chunk of his calendar hit. And so he’s going to be thinking, moving forward, how do I balance out my speaking revenue with other more passive income streams from here going forward? I think that’s going to be the big takeaway from all of this for speakers is how do we serve our clients in different ways. I think we’re going to see a lot of clients, uh, saying, okay, well and and I love the approach. Okay, you’re cancelling your meeting. My heart goes out to you because that’s really hard. How can I serve you? How can I be of service to you in this moment? And maybe you do a webinar series leading up to when the post phone meeting actually takes place.

Jane Atkinson (00:25:55):

Maybe there’s a way for you to help them solve a problem in a meantime virtually by consulting with them or doing and I think that that’s probably what we’re going to see as a kind of a bandaid. I know it’s not going to put all of the income back into people’s pocketbooks, but I’m hoping that by being of service that we can actually start to diminish our own outcomes because companies are still going to need to do some of these things and we are seeing them get creative about that. So talking about getting creative and we’re going to get some questions. Please if you’re watching this right now, stop with any questions. I’m going to be starting to ask a question to everyone here as well. Um, being creative. Uh, Frederick and I were both in the business of being, of talking about creativity

James Taylor (00:26:44):

and being creative. So I know he’s doing really creative things like that and kind of, uh, the, the, the, the, the wacky one I was working on, Maria and I already had a discussion about this is um, this company in London. I’m going down soon, uh, to do the hologram version of me. Uh, the, the previously done it with, uh, Stephen hole King and, and uh, Deepak Chopra. But that still doesn’t actually fix the problem cause you still need to put a hologram physically somewhere in a room. So they didn’t really fix the problem. But we’re hearing obviously a lot of, uh, people doing virtual presentations, virtual events. We’re hearing about people creating online products, other, other online courses, memberships, other things, things that speakers are doing. Um, what, uh, what things are you hearing that somebody, your speakers are working on, you think are actually quite useful?

James Taylor (00:27:29):

And I know I’m looking at some of our event organiser [inaudible] the question I have show them have is, okay, we’re not running the physical event. We want someone that speak to do something for our audience. Uh, what would the pricing be for that? It’s the same fee as, as what they were doing physically coming. Is is your percentage off or is it, how does it work? So, um, I don’t know, maybe Frederick if you want to give any kind of creative things that you’ve been seeing speakers doing yourself or other speakers in order to take advantage of this time.

Fredrik Haren (00:28:01):

Yeah, well, uh, from, uh, so from my perspective, I’m, I’m a bit of an outlier if I don’t, uh, I don’t, do, I just do the keynote so I’m not doing, um, uh, but I know a lot of my speaker friends of course, and this is started way before this fire is, is it’s the whole idea of, of, uh, like what we’re doing now webinar on or all these other products. My advice may be on this that because maybe it’s because I’m in content mode at the moment is I think there’s a lot of talk in this industry about creating multiple revenue streams and to me, I think it takes away the focus of what it means to be a speaker. So I like to think in the context of creating multiple message streams instead because I think it puts you in a much better mindset and saying, what is my message?

Fredrik Haren (00:28:51):

What is it? What am I, what am I here too? I did a speech recently in India speakers association and my closing message was, you are an icon off you are an icon of a message is humanity. And I actually believe in this. I think if we start thinking, I have a message, I can’t do it on the stage, big stage at a keynote. Now how else could I get my message out? And that is where we should start. And then we will figure out the business model later. But if we start saying, Oh, I’m shit, I’m not thinking in the money, how can I make money? We’re starting from the totally wrong place. That would be my advice, my pies.

James Taylor (00:29:23):

That’s great advice. And what about for you? Uh, sauna? Um, now I actually, I always feel that Dubai is always way ahead on this. I know that you, you, um, the, the very first time I saw that the holograms was, I think it was one of the, when the print prime princess was doing stuff using hologram. Oh, politicians. You told them you have a minister of artificial intelligence in Dubai. So always very far ahead when it comes to using technology. What are you seeing just now?

Saana Azzam (00:29:53):

I mean, I, the short answer is, or is there really a short answer? Um, with regards to Dubai, the plans are still ongoing as mentioned. Um, what we’re seeing with the speakers is like everyone else is saying they’re opting for the online courses, the online speaking, um, you know, publishing their books. Uh, and that’s definitely something that’s moving forward with regards to our business at this point in time. A lot of the speakers in this region are prepared for this coming up because as mentioned, we have Ramadan and summer and it’s such a long period so that you have to pivot your business model and you have to be agile. And so what a lot of the speakers do, and even us, you turn towards B2C. So sure, the big events aren’t happening with a thousand audience members, but the small events are still happening in the trainings are still happening in the one to one coaching and executive coaching that’s still ongoing.

Saana Azzam (00:30:50):

And I don’t see that as necessarily stopping. I see it that, you know, they’re not a new variable in the equation, uh, which is the virus. And so how would you organisations pivot? And so you need expertise. Some speakers are experts in their field and so it’s just kind of using that type of knowhow and bringing it into the equation and consulting organisations and where to move. What’s hard is what Frederick was saying is what is the next hotspot? Uh, we don’t know regionally where to look at, you know, should we be marketing towards Europe or Africa or America? We don’t know that. But what we do know, and this is quite predictable, is who are the beneficiaries of the virus, who are the beneficiaries of the situation? And so you have organisations and industries like pharma that are incredibly interesting to target. Um, and we’ve noticed that the big industry guys, you know, the construction, so they’re not necessarily hit by this. So they’re still people that we’re engaging with. So it’s kind of changing your model and saying, how can we add value to these sectors that still are possibly growing even? And that’s kind of the perspective in the strategy that we’re taking on at this point in time.

James Taylor (00:31:59):

Interesting. And uh, Maria, so that, that the question I asked just a moment ago as well, so what, well, first of all, what you seeing, what speak is ready, doing kind of creatively. And then if I’m a brand new client, I come to you and I say, you know, what’s the price, you know, uh, pricing for your speeds to come and do it live and what’s the pricing for them to do it virtually? Is there a difference in this person’s

Maria Franzoni (00:32:19):

right. Okay. Um, so in terms of, I haven’t seen anything different from what the other guys have said with what speakers are doing. What I would really strongly recommend that speakers do because often if they’re very busy, they don’t do as much as they could, is really work on that, on their assets and work on their content and spend some time doing some work on it. I see a lot speakers whose buyers need to, they need to update them. They need to update their topic descriptions, they need to update their videos. They need to also update their content and maybe develop more speeches within their expertise. Spend time doing that. Why not be ready, be ready for when things start again. Um, in terms of working remotely. So the value of what you deliver doesn’t change whether you are delivering it remotely or delivering it in person.

Maria Franzoni (00:33:05):

Um, if it does, then it’s, the value is wrong. Uh, you’ve not worked it out properly. So I would say if you were delivering remotely, then charge your local rate because you’re not having to travel. That’s the only difference. It’s the time factor of the travelling, but your content is still the same value and I’m sure that you as a speaker and Frederick as a speaker would agree with that. But you know, it doesn’t change the value of that delivery. So I would say you charge it looks, if a client came to me and said, I would like to have um, James speak in, um, in Singapore remotely cause we don’t want him to travel, I would say to you, charge your local rate rather than your Singapore rate. Um, so, uh, was there another question?

Maria Franzoni (00:33:49):

I think I’d always, it was one that I saw coming up quite a lot was people asking about the now having to do virtual with having to be doing virtual before and they would just want one quite sure what to charge. That’s great. There. Are you seeing any other interesting concrete it uses the speakers are making of this time? Um, I think people, it’s essentially what Frederick was saying, people are thinking should I be creating other products? But I think Frederick’s absolutely right that you’ve got to stick to what you’re really, you know what you’re really good at and focus on that and not dilute your message. Something you’ve got to be very careful not to follow the next shiny object. Um, but so I’m not really answering your question. Um, I haven’t seen anything particularly different or creative because I, we’ve been buried in renegotiating contracts, so not really, but was I something I was asked, um, by a speaker.

Maria Franzoni (00:34:38):

Um, and I think it’s something that people would be thinking about is that, you know, over the next few months where people probably will travel a bit less, will there be a change where people suddenly wake up to the fact that we can do stuff remotely? Even though we’ve had the technology for years, it hasn’t really had a huge impact. People have always still come together. Will we see the industry change? I personally don’t think so. I think as soon as things are recover people, the whole point of conferences is not just to see the speaker is to get together to connect. So I don’t see that changing, um, longer term. Um, and then the other thing, so when we had SARS, um, what I found changed is that a lot of people did more internal events as opposed to big conferences. Because what happens is they, they had the budgets to spend on their big conferences.

Maria Franzoni (00:35:26):

And as you know, in a corporate, if you don’t spend your money this year, your budget, that means you don’t need it next year. So it gets cut. So the companies are thinking, well, hang on a minute, I need to spend versus I think we’re going to see an absolute rise in internal events where perhaps they will do more internal events and have more speakers or higher level speakers than they would normally have had so that they can spend their budget and who benefits the company to staff it benefits. So I hope we see that again. I saw that in with SARS in 2003.

James Taylor (00:35:58):

That’s fascinating. It’s very interesting. And then, um, uh, for you Jane, what, uh, what advice are you giving to your, your, the clients that you coach or speakers that you coach on this, uh, are you giving you advice for how to use their time, how to use this, what is suddenly maybe a, a period of lots of weight in the calendar?

Jane Atkinson (00:36:15):

Well, we’ve got this idea of a productive quarantine. So if it starts to happen, um, where your area and you’re saying, let’s have a less travel, how are we going to make that work for ourselves? And that’s a great time to be looking like Frederick is at your book. Now. I do come at things from a little bit different perspective. Whereas I’d like to see my clients positioning themselves as an expert. And speaking is perhaps just one of the things that they do to transfer their knowledge from place to place. So we might have books, we might have online courses, we might have membership platforms. Um, if my clients are consultants, our goal isn’t to sell like when speed is actually selling the solution to a problem and that might stretch out over the course of a year. So think about maybe rising up from the transactional point to being someone who is really there to serve your clients and help to solve a problem.

Jane Atkinson (00:37:20):

The question on webinars and webinars series, people are often wondering how do I price that? And I did a podcast once with somebody who ran a company that did the hologram type things and he suggested that it was half your normal fee. And I think that that’s um, really good for the client because, um, and, and you to be able to make money, you know, with whatever’s your in your [inaudible] bottoms, it is kind of a nice ability to make a little bit money. So you might be able to think about it from that perspective of half your normal fee. Also, this might be a time to develop your video series. You know, you ask your client, how long do you want this message to last when they’re hiring you to come in and give one speech? And they might say, well, we want it to last as long as possible.

Jane Atkinson (00:38:13):

Well, how about I provide you with a series of videos that you can have at your Monday morning meetings to help keep the message alive. That’s a possibility as well. Um, Jen McDonough out on the chatbox talked about really going out to some of the local clients and letting them, no ma’am, no, I mean I’m going to say the term fire sale here, but I wouldn’t say that to my clients, but maybe you run some sort of local special so that people who are in your region who can have smaller meetings of a hundred to 200 people, maybe you can go to them and deliver something at a discounted rate over a period of time while we’re in this deck economic downturn. And I love that this is an opportunity. I don’t love this situation because it is re really, really hard for some people. This is an opportunity for people who speak on change, who speak on resilience.

Jane Atkinson (00:39:12):

If your clients are now, uh, have an economic impact of this, maybe they can’t even get what they need to deliver the goods because China’s is shut down and all the factories in China. Now this may be an opportunity for you to say, okay, here are some of my techniques for, you know, dealing with change, dealing with resilience. And it may be that you can get creative on how you deliver it to them so that they can kind of keep moving forward. One of the things that I’ve heard from several speakers bureaus and, um, people who manage speakers is stay calm and carry on. And so that’s kind of the message. And I think, um, maybe we’ll add to that and be creative about way you do business.

James Taylor (00:39:57):

And when you’re just thinking about change resilience, I don’t know if the, I think maybe a Siro quote, I’m looking at two of our, I’ll speak as you members circle even and uh, from, uh, from Europe and uh, Judy Lewis from uh, Abu Dhabi. They speak on notes. So if you’re hearing this just now, you’ll, I’m sure you’ll be very pleased about what Jane was just saying there. Um, so let, let’s get into, uh, some questions here from everyone. Uh, so Nathan just saying this is our time to be a positive virtual is so much easier for future clients. Uh, also just saying, uh, virtual handshakes and copies. Um, here in question here, coming from Mira olden who a corporate is decision maker regarding creating more internal events versus large meetings. This was kind of what uh, Maria was just talking about here. Is it, is it different people are doing internal events as opposed to large meetings?

Maria Franzoni (00:40:51):

Uh, yes and no. Um, so it’s, it’s, it’s never usually just one person, but you will have, uh, your different departments. You might have, um, a talent director. You might have HR director, you might have, uh, any, uh, heads of departments, sales, marketing, they, they, they are likely all to want to have internal meetings. There’s, um, there’s no sort of just one, but it’s you, you want somebody fairly senior obviously.

James Taylor (00:41:16):

Ah, nice. I want to hear from Steven Holden Burnett saying, I’m also offering virtual lunch and learns with my training. Provide agencies to help them to provide Goodwill sessions with their corporate clients in terms of building that Goodwill, helping clients. Great. A great one there. Uh, who else do we have here? Um, someone was just saying, I think, I think it was Cyril Dominick. He was saying, uh, if doing virtual presentation, don’t sit behind a laptop, stand up, move around, use your body. Um, uh, Frederick and I, uh, uh, both friendly with our Ron Kaufman who’s a great speaker. Listen, Singapore and he has this big studio kind of set up now so we can ease it can be physical because Ron is a very physical, uh, type of like a speaker. Um, let’s have a look here as well. Yeah,

Jane Atkinson (00:42:03):

a standup desk is fun for that too. James. I have stand up desks so I can really get into it when I want or what I need.

James Taylor (00:42:11):

That’s, I totally feel comfortable. [inaudible] the company that’s uh, that does the, the holograms. Interestingly, um, when I was talking to them, they, I said, who have you been working with recently? And they said they’d been working, they just done one with a Tony Robbins, but he said it was a real nightmare to do Tony’s phone because he wanted to be able to move physically across that huge stage that you know, he likes. So he had the whole grand, the whole stage. So you can imagine technology is involved in that. Um, so, uh, don’t help Turnbull. CSP, I heard about one of the scientists in the U S singers will settle down in about six weeks and then come back with a vengeance in October. Don’t know. We’re not, we’re not doctors here. So, uh, I’m just going to go who stuff? Um, uh, what else do we have here?

James Taylor (00:42:57):

Um, great advice from Maria. Thank you. About charging your look or rate the value to the audience should be the same as matter where you are kind of presenting. Uh, what else do we have here? I’m just kind of going through this here as well. Are you noticing just on this kind of point where people are more, you mentioned there, um, Jane about developing your video series. Um, I know one speaker that was talking to me recently, I think he did, you mentioned you did like one point $3 million last year on his keynote sales. We did six point $2 million on his virtual video series. They help sell the times to, um, uh, my understanding where he really excels on that is when you go and give the speech, then you immediately looked up. So the client, how are the clients you work with? How are you seeing them actually sell that to the client? In the video series, kind of, it’s becoming very popular. Lots of speakers starting to do their own video series.

Jane Atkinson (00:43:54):

You could probably be starting to tee it up during the original conversation with that question. Like, well, how long would you like this message to last? And if you really get into helping them solve a problem, then I think that that, and it becomes a bigger thing. Okay. So this keynote is designed to kick off the part of the solution. How do we get that going? Now you may wait if you’re nervous that the client is not interested in talking, but yet you may wake up and say, okay, can we have a followup call after the event is done? And I’m going to come back to you with a series of recommendations. And so based on what I observed as I was preparing and delivering my speech for your organisation, here are my recommendations and you might even give them a choice of a package.

Jane Atkinson (00:44:50):

Um, Laurie guest and I did a podcast not too long ago called sweet spot price thing and your goal is to have like kind of the basic pricing, here’s if we want to keep it going. And then you have your sweet spot which is the middle one and then you have this upper package that is really expensive and has a lot of things in it, but it may not actually be the one that you want to do. The middle one is going to be one that you’re kind of steering them towards and it’s got all of this kind of more longterm thing that you might be able to offer them. And it could include, we’re going to get you a video once a week. It could, it could include you know, products or access yes to your online programmes or membership programmes or whatever. You really want to be building out the value there for your programme. And, and you could just do it in an all in a proposal afterwards and then that templated proposal just gets tweaked for every client going forward. You find out what works and then you double down on that, you template it and you try it on other clients and just customise it as you go.

James Taylor (00:45:56):

You don’t have to leave home as long as you’re selling this as well.

Jane Atkinson (00:45:59):

You don’t have to leave home. You could, you can, you know, my goal for my clients is that we’re building the business that’s perfect for you. So if you don’t like Frederick, he doesn’t, he wants to do keynotes and that’s his business model. That’s fantastic. I think everybody should decide exactly what’s perfect for them and then offer up deliverables that are based on what’s perfect for them.

James Taylor (00:46:26):

I’ve seen some other ones here. Jennifer McDon McDonna I think is is, uh, I’m planning to contact local speaker bureaus to let them know I’m a local speaker available for last minute speaking cancellations my school. Um, uh, okay. Uh, Samuel looks at other ones here. Sorry, I have something go through these as well. Uh, and yeah, I mean, the whole, the face, every time the VR, AI technology, what’s everyone’s going to take on this? I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m usually the most ProTech person you could possibly imagine. But when it comes to the experience, I, I’ve yet to be convinced from an audience perspective, what’s, what was everyone’s take on, on this AR, VR. Um, what you, what your, what’s your take on it? So James might, eh, you don’t have to

Jane Atkinson (00:47:21):

all day like works right now and the AI and the hologram and the design to that, there’s no need. So just stay calm and keep, right.

Saana Azzam (00:47:30):

Um, it’s, it’s just a question of work on your craft, get your PR, write some open articles, write some LinkedIn content, start creating traction. Like use this time to really build your brand so that when the meetings and things have calmed down and they will calm down and the meetings will start, then you’re ready and you’re good to go. And you’ve been top of mind because you’ve been creating so much content. Take another set of great headshots out there that doesn’t require you to move much further. Right? So do that type of activity at the moment and be incredibly strategic about building enough content. Yeah,

Fredrik Haren (00:48:08):

you can say something ma’am. Yeah. I want to build on that because I think it’s a little bit dangerous to start doing something brand new that you never done before that that’s okay to do that. But where you also don’t, where there are faults. I’m not a market. I think there is a risk right now. The clients are very risk averse. They would buy something they never bought before. I’ve never seen bye bye. I’m a, it could happen. I’m not saying it couldn’t, but I think there’s a risk of it. But I also think that that writing, I’m writing the book and all that is very important. But I would like to add one advice more on that. So I’ve been doing a lot of interviews for the last few weeks for my books, but I’m contacting, uh, I’m doing Skype interviews with people because all over the world.

Fredrik Haren (00:48:49):

And the whole idea with this is to get the research but also to be top of mind with these people because we have to remember our speakers. The problem is not now. The problem is six to nine months from now because we get get the speaking gigs that we have should have had now we got them because six to nine months ago someone heard us speak. So now if, if when it goes down, there are no events happening. I mean six to nine months from now those bookings, those calls are not going to come. Oh, I heard you speak. I just remembered your top of mind. I would like you to come and this is going to happen. So it means we need to be top of mind in another way. And the only way that is as powerful as some are seeing on stage is a one on one deep interview with a top suite, a suite executive. So that when they, if I interview a lot of heads of innovation right now and I am absolutely convinced that six months from now when they are starting to do events again, they’re going to say, Oh, so who should we invite when I haven’t heard of this speaker for a long time? Well, I remember that great interview I did so I don’t, don’t see that home and right. Sit, sit and do interviews and then write from them. I think that’s going to be crucial six to nine months from now

James Taylor (00:49:52):

and I think that that’s really what we’ve been doing here. Any of you, some of you might’ve been on some of our summits and if somebody you’d been interviewed for some of our summits as well. They’re like a podcast show on steroids a as Americans would say and the outages and there’s another way of getting kind of content out there. It’s another way of kind of being top of mind building this relationship. You don’t have to go this hardcore, is that even just saying during those interviews, reaching out, whether it’s research for a book or even that maybe now is a good time to start that new podcast show and that topic to position yourself as an expert. So Maria, you’re going to say something? Yes, I wanted to actually, I wanted to respond and I don’t want burst anybody’s bubble,

Maria Franzoni (00:50:28):

but please don’t start caught contacting speaker bureaus and saying, I am local and I’m available for last minute events because the speaker bureaus are full of speakers who’ve now had their events cancelled and they’re going to be looking to give them the the work first. If you’re going to purchase speak Bureau, have something more than that to say because anybody can say, I’m available for last minute gigs. You’ve got to have something unique that you’re saying to Bureau to get their attention. We’re very busy. We get approached by so many speakers every single day. Don’t spend this time while it’s quiet approaching speaker bureaus unless you are really unique. Got something really good to offer because to be honest with you, we get approached to not

James Taylor (00:51:12):

maybe, maybe Maria, they could go to their local client base and make the same offer. It could be that they’re not getting quite as inundated as the bureaus are. I think there’s a lot of local business to be done in a time like this. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, you get to your local Bureau to make, make them happy as well. It’s a win, win, win. I guess there’s a quote, there’s a question here for sauna. I was probably a good one for, um, uh, she is a think person person’s supposed to be travelling to Dubai for three weeks next Wednesday. Shoot me this mean for a speaking engagement and each day I wonder if I should go ahead or not. Um, are you, you live in the, in the, the, in Dubai. What is your take? We should, I, I know I’m gonna put my hand up. I’m travelling to buck to Dubai tomorrow to do an engagement for you in Saudi Arabia on Sunday. So I feel perfectly comfortable just now, uh, travelling. But, uh, what is your take on this? They seem a few weeks time.

Saana Azzam (00:52:10):

Great. So there are a few realities here. Um, you know, make sure that you get paid up front. That’s MBA be quite firm on that. Um, but reality is that if there is going to be a cancellation, it’s going to be done probably last minute. Uh, we’ve, we’ve seen events on the day, on the day, uh, we were heading out to an event that was meant to happen at 6:30 PM. I’m sitting in the car, the baby’s in the back and you know, the hassle of getting the baby on board.

James Taylor (00:52:41):

Right.

Saana Azzam (00:52:45):

At 5:00 PM I get a call. No, it’s not a call. Sorry. It’s a WhatsApp message with a picture cancelled event and I write a no speech question Mark. No. So I just turn around. All right. Wow. So, uh, I don’t want to be an alarmist, but the reality is that it might come as a last minute and so you have to sign it somehow factor that in, that the cancellation might happen, especially at this point in time in Dubai. Okay, great.

James Taylor (00:53:18):

I think it was Jane, were you going to come in? So having come through Toronto airport and Phoenix yesterday,

Jane Atkinson (00:53:26):

here at the hotel, it kind of looks business as usual. You guys, there are very few people wearing masks or were very few, maybe five or 10% on the plane wearing masks. Um, there was a lot of people around and uh, the American heart association is here in the hotel right now and I would guess that they have 600 delegates. And so that meeting is happening. There are some things that are still going on and I think that, um, I did the programme, I did a podcast, which is actually going to drop at 1:00 PM Eastern time today with an, an an economics expert. So Andrew Bush actually wrote a book on how pandemics or epidemics can affect the economy. And I call Andy the great calmer downer because he is, got a very reassuring way about him, no matter what’s going on in the economy. And he knows the Trump white house very, very well.

Jane Atkinson (00:54:33):

And he, I think his main point on the podcast, and I’ll put the podcast link in the chat box here, was that once the messaging gets straightened around, he was really upset about the messaging not being the right message a few weeks ago, which then sent the markets into its L span. But the markets have started to correct themselves. And when we talked, uh, two days ago, he was hopeful that we were getting onto the right side of this. Okay. It wasn’t going to be net, there were not any more cases but that, that we were starting to get a handle on it. So that I’m saying that for the people who are listening and um, who are doing business in the United States that we may not see this massive globally. I mean nobody knows of course how long and, and what the ramifications are going to be. We’re definitely seeing some things that are short term right now, but if they come up with some treatments or cures, that could really be like one thing happening could really tip the scale in a direction where things start to come back. And so stay calm and carry on.

Fredrik Haren (00:55:52):

Patrick, I think you were going to say something now. Uh, yes, maybe very quickly. One of the expert I interviewed was the head of innovation at rock who does that medicine. So I asked him and he said there is already a cure. The problem is that they won’t get to the market until June, 2021 because how long it takes to get approval. So just put that in perspective. He was not optimistic about the cure on this, but talking about optimism as we start to finish up here. So as we talked with all the challenges in, but

James Taylor (00:56:24):

can you see each of you maybe just one thing that’s optimistic, one thing as we get through this, so hopefully on the other end that you think actually, um, this could be a positive for our industry, for speakers, for our clients. It is one note of optimism and all this stuff that’s going on at the moment. It’s the period of change and disruption. Uh, what would that be? And maybe I’ll come to you first Frederick cause you usually come up to me and I go last. I’ve been living with this for weeks, uh, for a month. So maybe, maybe I’ll go to sauna because you’re, you’re, uh, you’re the new parent and you’ll be in every morning. You’re looking at the face of this, this new child, fantastic life. I ended up, so what is the optimistic side of this? What, what, what are you feeling hopeful about?

Saana Azzam (00:57:15):

Okay, so we had a master class with about 10 attendees the other day. And um, one point person thought that she had, that she was infected, but she still insisted on showing up and everyone else was okay with it. And she was just wearing the mask and she was sitting on her own and everyone else was sitting on the other side. And the workshop continued for two days. So, you know, if you do have a flu or a cold, you’d still show up. You’d just maybe be a bit more cautious. So we know that things are still happening. And I’m Ascension. I believe this is a great opportunity to audit your own set of marketing collateral, your positioning. And this is also a great opportunity to win market share. Whether you’re a speaker, speakers Bureau or whatever your business is, this is a great opportunity to be top of mind. So make the most of it because surely we’re going to be in situations where our industries are going to get disrupted or there’s going to be news that shows up that shakes us up a little bit. So take this opportunity to exercise agility and resilience as well. And I have a fly here.

James Taylor (00:58:18):

Yeah, give me a, give me a dose of, of a British, uh, optimism. I’m Italian.

Maria Franzoni (00:58:30):

So one I do think we will see more internal events taking place and I think that’s an opportunity too to get more business. And if you can get in with the company and do an internal event, there’s opportunities to speak to different departments. So that’s great. Um, uh, I also, uh, see a change I think in the future with how we as a a world deals with a crisis. Because let’s be honest here, this is something that happened in, uh, a wet market in China could potentially cause a global recession because of how we’re handling it. And I think we have to rethink how we deal with these things. Um, and so I think we will see governments, uh, working differently, cooperating differently. Um, I, I hope that’s what’s going to happen because we should not be so that

Fredrik Haren (00:59:22):

that’s something that is really the end of the day. Something like the flu could potentially cause us to react in this way. And what about Eugene give us some optimism now.

Jane Atkinson (00:59:32):

Well, look at the numbers. There’s nearly 8 billion people in the world looking from that perspective at how many people are actually infected and from there, how many people will actually, and and for me, the numbers really help calm me down. This is a great time for you to build relationships and be of service to your clients.

Fredrik Haren (00:59:53):

Coming back to you Frederick. Now I, as you said, I am a, I’m usually always optimistic and I am very optimistic uh, now as well. But not, I guess I did a post today say we need to name this bugger. And I say, I think it’s the global economic crisis. I think that’s, I think I’m, I think it’s going to hit much more worse economically than, than we have seen yet. Just based on all the numbers of, of, of companies laying off people and stuff like that. If it spreads totally globally, we’ll see. But, uh, but it is optimistic and it’s, I see it up to, I’m not freaking out at all from, from the perspective of me as a speaker because that’s classic thing, right? When the tide goes away, it’s you, you see who’s not wearing pants, right. That’s the classic Warren buffet.

Fredrik Haren (01:00:41):

I think when the tide goes away, the great speakers are going to have an amazing time. And so it’s really about upping your game in everything that we do. Because I think there will be less speaking gigs in the world for quite a long while, but those speaking gigs are going to be very, very important for the client. And that budget might even be a less of an issue for them. So the ones who get those gigs are going to have a great time, but there’s going to be fewer of them. So, uh, you’re a game for the next, for the next few months, uh, if even longer than that, I think, uh, if what we have to info, well, uh, great, uh, optimism as we start to finish up there. So we’ve been here breathing in, breathing out, uh, being agile during this time as well, having multiple message streams, not just multiple revenue streams here.

Fredrik Haren (01:01:30):

Um, charging local rate and deprivation for virtual, the increased potential increase in internal events, uh, productive Corenti, which I think is a great phrase. Um, [inaudible] using that time to do that. Uh, winning market share, building relationships. Um, thank you everyone for coming on this. Uh, tell us all, you know, if people want to kind of learn more about you, your Bureau’s or your websites or your, your coaching, where should they go to do that? How do you want to maybe come in first on that? Frederick? Well, yeah. Okay. From this perspective. I should, I guess I should sell professional speaking.com then I blog on how to be a global keynote speaker. Fantastic. And

Jane Atkinson (01:02:08):

yes, so please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I think it’s a great place for us to have a conversation or mina-speakers.com and Maria.

James Taylor (01:02:20):

Yeah, so you can find me. The Bureau is mfl.global and I also have a speaker training company as well, helping speakers to be speaker Bureau ready. And that’s speaking, speaking business academy.com. I’m NJ and I can be reached@speakerlauncher.com. Well thank you all for coming on this and it was very short notice. Thank you everyone for attending this as well. My name’s James Taylor. I’m the host, uh, uh, speakers. You, I’m a keynote speaker at international speakers summit in good, any of those places and learn about those things. Uh, w you know, wherever happens, we’re going to go through obviously a choppy time. I wish you and your families all the best, uh, during this time. This is being recorded. So you will get the replays of it to be able to watch, and if you want to share it with friends and family, that’s, that’s quite all right as well. So thank you so much and thanks to our guests today. Thank you.