London Speaker Bureau
London Speaker Bureau is an agency with a database of experts from across the world, available to book for speaking slots, advisory engagements and masterclass delivery.
What is London Speaker Bureau?
This platform groups highly experienced and knowledgeable professionals by trend and topic to enable organisers to easily find and book speakers for their events.
Who is London Speaker Bureau suitable for?
London Speaker Bureau is not for everyone. It’s specifically geared towards individuals who are acknowledged experts in their industry or field. The typical expert on this platform has been at the sharp end of an important subject and/or has held a position of note.
The Pros
- Unless there are major changes to your area of expertise, once you have signed up there is no profile management or searching for opportunities to undertake.
- The types of engagements offered can be quick and lucrative, generally paying speaker fees worth cancelling other engagements for. We have heard of speaker fees ranging from £2,000 for a simple Zoom speech, to over £100k for ‘big name’ speakers. Assume £5-10k for a typical in-person speaker fee.
The Cons
- With such a vast database of impressive speakers and little opportunity to differentiate your offer via the platform, standing out can be difficult.
- Opportunities are not frequent. Once signed up, you can expect to be approached regarding anywhere from 0-8 opportunities per year. Opportunities often fall through, or event organisers change plans, so you can consider 3-4 gigs per year to be a good result.
What’s it like for applicants?
In order to apply you must submit a bio, examples of you speaking elsewhere and pictures for use in your profile, should you be accepted. If they would like to consider adding you to the platform you’ll have to undertake a screening call after which a decision will be made.
Once you’re listed, you’ll be contacted each time a relevant opportunity comes up. If the topic and location works for you, you’ll get shortlisted and your profile will be shared with the client. Thereafter you are contacted if the client wishes to proceed with the booking.
Trustpilot Score:
- None recorded
Typical Trustpilot reviews:
- From what we hear, while this doesn’t serve as a main income stream for our community members, if you can get listed it can offer a nice supplementary income.
How to apply for roles with London Speaker Bureau
You can sign up to the London Speaker Bureau by emailing Lucinda Swan whose details can be found on this page. Make your bio as strong as possible to reduce the amount of work they need to do in order to list you. Take some time to ensure that your overall web presence is impressive too, focusing on things like your LinkedIn and TPC profiles.
Here at The Portfolio Collective, we also get asked if we have experts for public speaking engagements. If you’re interested in getting matched with relevant future opportunities when they come up, complete your TPC profile to ensure you’re found and tagged for those opportunities. You can learn how to build a strong TPC profile in this article.
We understand that not everyone is suited to public speaking, so we offer advice on other options you can consider for your portfolio career in our article ‘What is a portfolio career?’.
If you have additional insights on this platform, please email [email protected]