From Speaker Training to Six-Figure Fees, How Excel Speakers Agency Helps Speakers Scale Impact
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In this episode of Mission Matters, host Adam Torres interviews Roxy Snyder, Executive Sales at Excel Speakers Agency, about the business of public speaking. Roxy shares insights on speaker branding, fee structures, and how her agency helps speakers get discovered, trained, and booked around the globe. Recorded live at the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
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About Roxy Snyder
Roxy is a proven sales powerhouse, consistently delivering exceptional results with clients across the globe. As the Marketplace Sales Manager, she brings a dynamic and strategic approach to every interaction, ensuring that clients achieve their desired outcomes. Her efforts have played a key role in securing top-tier speakers for high-profile events worldwide, solidifying her reputation within the global event industry.
Known for her relentless drive and genuine commitment to client success, Roxy has become a trusted partner to many. Outside of her professional achievements, she is passionate about fitness and clean eating, maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle. When she’s not in the office, Roxy can often be found planning her next Caribbean adventure.
About Excel Speakers Agency
Excel Speakers Agency is where powerful connections between speakers and audiences are made, unlocking transformative experiences for organizations and individuals alike. As a trusted partner powered by the eSpeakers platform—the global hub of the speaking industry—Excel Speakers Agency ensures that the right voices reach the right audiences. The agency leverages cutting-edge tools and technology to help expert presenters connect, grow, and succeed in an evolving marketplace.
With a focus on fostering meaningful relationships between speakers and event organizers, Excel Speakers Agency is dedicated to delivering long-term impact through expertly curated talent. Event professionals around the world rely on Excel Speakers Agency as their go-to source for discovering and booking top-tier speakers who inform, inspire, and ignite lasting change.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I am in Newport Beach, California covering the Newport Beach Investor Conference.
And lemme tell you this, one of my favorite conferences of the year gimme a, an excuse to go out to Beautiful Newport Beach, but also to meet all these wonderful investors, companies doing pitches and a whole lot more. And my next guest is Roxy. Roxy, welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Alright, Roxy, so what brings you to the conference today? I am here because I have launched a new business in the speakings bureau industry. And ma here, just, you know. Connecting with people that I’m already know in the investment. Mm-hmm. Business industry. Hmm. Yeah. So speaker viewer, a speaker bureau have you been in that industry long or is that your background?
Like, give us a little bit more. How’d you get the idea? I’ve been in the industry for over 17 years. Mm-hmm. And I have grow, helped grow and develop this company to become a global presence. So we’re opening offices in Singapore and the Middle East right now. Hmm. What do you like about the business?
I’m working with speakers. I love meeting so many incredibly talented people globally. Hmm. This just such a, a huge number of thought leaders and people that are changing the world. Yeah. Now are you working with speakers that are established, have great reels? Are you working with people that are just starting?
Are you working with all of the above? Are there different models? Like, tell us a little bit more about the business. Well, I do work with all of ’em. We represent over 20,000 speakers. Whoa. That’s a lot of speakers worldwide. Yeah. And so, yeah. So we have all levels, but I, I would say most of the people that I work with have been in the industry for many years.
Hmm. What kind of advice? There’s a lot of people that watch this. So business owners, entrepreneurs, executives, and one of the things that I like to encourage people is to tell their story, to step on stage, whether they’re paid speakers, like the individuals you’re working with or just, or novices or, I won’t say novices, but just wanna go out there and help people.
Right. Get on stage and help people. Yeah. So maybe even some unpaid gigs. Mm-hmm. What do you tell that. Network of individuals that wanna get into the business. I think it’s a lot of people have a story to share that other people just love to hear. Like, how did you get there? Especially like entrepreneurs.
Yeah. They’ve, they’ve done a lot of grit and grind and, and succeeded and lost and succeeded and, you know, and. People wanna hear those stories. Mm. And that I think that’s true in the sports industry. Yeah. Or just trying to be dedicated in the field you choose. Mm-hmm. Talk to me a bit about, and this, I’ve always been curious about speaker fees.
Mm-hmm. Like, how, like, is it like in, how do you gauge, how do you know, how do you pick the market? Like, how does somebody know what their speaker fee should be? Well, you start off with on the lower end, and as you build up where your calendar gets more and more full, that’s a good sign to start increasing your feast.
Oh. And also if your, if your topic’s very hot and you just become a real name draw. Yeah. Then you can be up to you know, only do one or two events a year. And you can command quite a high fee in the six figures. Yeah. Does that scarcity help, do you find, or is it, or is that a, like a myth? Is that a mi, am I a myth busting here?
Like some, some of the people that only come out a couple times, but have these really large speaking fees. Is part of that scarcity, or what do you think? No, I mean, there’s more and more of that lately. Yeah. Especially with the social media and everything out there, e everything seems to just. Grow 10 times, it’s bad.
Alright, now, now, now this is one of my favorite parts about doing the show. And for my long-term listeners, you already know this, I’m gonna get some some free coaching here. Yeah. So my speakers fees started lower. They were like in the 2000 range, 3000 and then, you know, travel fees, things like that. I got them up to like, let’s say the 10, 10,000 mark and, you know, eight to 12 if we’re, if we’re discounting.
Yeah. But I never hit like. Only once have I commanded a solid 25 grand for a 45 minute speech, and that was only once ever. So I’m not getting that every day, but mm-hmm. What do you tell people like myself that are stuck at that? Like consistent five grand mark? Sometimes 10 to 12, and if you’re watching and trying to negotiate my speaker fees, I’m pretty booked right now.
So chill. Just call me, I’ll help you out. Yeah, there you go. We’re gonna leave it. But what do you tell somebody who’s. Stuck in that kind of like middle market Yeah. If you will. Or lower, lower market, I should say. I think to, to increase your presence is Yeah. Do some short little video clips mm-hmm.
In two to three minutes. Yeah. Those are great for promoting you as a bureau to promote you as a speaker and to really. Get more exposure for you. Hmm. So videos are huge. If you happen to have any books or anything, I always like to encourage that you do book signing at, you know, at conferences and then that gets your name out there more.
So everyone that attended would, has your name in their hand. Hmm. So bureau versus non bureau. What, what’s the, gimme the argument from both sides of the table. And I know obviously. I shouldn’t say obviously, but you’re a bureau, so you have to be self-interest. You want more people. We got over 20,000 speakers you’re representing, so obviously you’re doing something right, by the way.
Yeah. Well, and the, and the fact to be with a, to be represented by a bureau, you have exposure. We have clients all around the world. Yeah. That isn’t something, you know, that we as a company do a lot of marketing and everything, and through all the years have built up this. Presence. Yeah. Where you have clients that will come to us versus if you’re an an individual speaker.
Yeah. It’s a lot of work to try to get that same exposure. Yeah. I’ve seen, I’ve seen people go both routes and for me it always seemed like the bureau was the better route. Yeah. Especially if you’re thinking about like, it’s all to me, have a team. Yeah. You need to have a team. You need to have other people around you.
Yeah. You need to have support. And then even things just like contracts negotiating. Talk a little bit more about the specific services that you offer to your clients. At different levels, by the way, so that people understand, especially if they have never worked with a bureau or they’re out there on their own and they’re booking here and there, but they wanna do more.
Mm-hmm. So if I have client that says I, I need a speaker that speaks on, let’s say artificial intelligence. Mm-hmm. I usually send ’em a short list of maybe six to 10 suggestions of some of my top picks. Mm-hmm. And those it depends on their budget and everything to make sure that I meet their budget, maybe location and all of that.
The client usually then will review the list and decide who they want. Just speaking, they’ll watch their videos, look at their speaker profile Yeah. Yeah. And stuff. And then. From then, then I, I do all the contract negotiations and I handle all the financial payments as well as work with the client and the travel and, and yeah, just kind of seamlessly putting it all together.
Yeah, so I, I, I’d be like a bureau of somebody that manages the whole. Engagement with between the client and the speaker. Yeah. And it seems like when you’re working in that manner, it allows you to do more, get on more stages. Yeah. Especially if you’re a speaker and you have a message that you wanna share and Yeah.
Get, do more. Right. Yeah. And I always encourage to get spinoff work. So if you’ll have somebody else that was watching you speak Yeah. Oftentimes they will call me back and say, I love that guy. I want, I wanna book him as well. Interesting. Yeah. So it. It tends to be when you’re with a bureau, it’s a compounding effect.
Makes sense? Mm-hmm. Now, you mentioned speaker profile videos. Let’s give some tips here today. I love ’em for my audience when they walk away with some tips let’s say good. Not so good. Great. What are some of the ingredients? You don’t have to call any specific speaker out of first. That’s not what I’m asking for.
Like, components. What are the ingredients that make a, somebody great versus not so great in terms of their, their presence in term for those documents? I think to have good videos of, again, two to three minute short videos to and to showcases You’re speaking. Okay. So Theo, so they can see. And also a great photo that’s current up today.
Photo. Photo. Okay. So no, no cell phone photo. They need a nice professional, professional, professional photo. Okay, good. As short and for those videos, what kind of videos are we talking? Are we talking onstage? Are we talking. Speaking, like, gimme a little bit more on what makes a great one when they’re on stage or if they’re just being interviewed or a podcast or anything.
They just wanna, clients wanna just be able to see you speak. Yeah. Yeah. And get a, yeah. And see how, what your style is. All right. So you said video, you said headshots gotta be premium, none of these cell phone pictures. What else? What else makes it good? And then you put together a short bio that has your background as well as some short briefs on your different keynote topics that you speak on.
And those are really key. So that’s kind of, that what is, what encompasses your speaker profile and when you’re thinking of the bio. So we’re gonna go a little bit more granular here when we’re getting into the bio part. What makes a great bio a great bio is where you pretty much encompass your full background but also, you know, have some real key words.
Mm. Within there, like all the things that, let’s say as a AI speaker. All the things that you’ve done that encompasses artificial intelligence. Yeah. And your background. Make sure that’s in your bio. And for the and now do you, as a representative from the speaker bureau, would you do you help those that come to you for, let’s just say, obviously the people that are super professed, they already have all that done.
Maybe, maybe you need to do a little bit of tweaking, but for those that are kind of. Just getting started or on are still not commanding those top fees. Do you help them with that? Do you help develop it? Like talk about the relationship and kind of how that unfolds? Yeah. We actually have a a division within our organization that just focuses on the speakers.
Mm. And we do training. Oh, wow. So the district, we do individual coaching. We do help them with their speaker profile. Yeah. We, we. Certify them as being a virtual speaker so that clients know that you do all the right stuff and gone through the course to be able to speak virtually, which is was big during COVID.
Yeah. So yeah, our company helps in all of that. And we also, our company offers, a CRM and program that’s fully customized for speakers that wanna run their business. Yeah, they can do that through our software. Yeah. That’s awesome. Mm-hmm. And so it looks like if somebody wants to get started, they, there’s training, there’s a lot of other things.
If there’s more experienced individuals, then they’re already an assistant. Them. Then if they’re marketable and they command, then you’re putting it in front of the right clients. Yeah. And then there’s that in between where it’s like there’s a, you know, you, you wanna get your level to your, your speaking career to the next level.
Mm-hmm. Well work with people that know what they’re doing. Right. Yeah. That’s correct. Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. Last thing I want you to do, look, look into the camera and tell people how they can follow up. If they’re out there, they wanna be a speaker, they are a speaker, if they wanna connect and if they wanna learn more.
Yeah. Please feel free to go to our [email protected]. Or you can go to east speakers.com. Thank you. Fantastic. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on the links and head right on over. And speaking to the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet.
Hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Roxy, thank you again so much for coming. It’s been so much fun.
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
