With over 30 years of experience in the speaker and conference business, Steve Markman is the Founder and President of Markman Speaker Management, LLC, a multi-service speaker agency founded nearly 30 years ago. Among his services, Steve conducts customized virtual training where he teaches the processes, strategies, and techniques of successfully attaining speaking engagements that are used to boost visibility and create thought leadership opportunities.

Steve has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives, consulting principals, authors, and people from all walks of life attain speaking engagements. He has helped clients in virtually all industries, from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

Steve also runs a Speakers Bureau division, providing keynote speakers for organizations worldwide, covering a wide array of topics.

Prior to launching his own firm in 1994, Steve headed up the conference divisions of leading organizations, including COMDEX and The Conference Board.

• CEO Hack: Accept rejections
• CEO Nugget: Look up to the American Society of Association Executives directory as a way to develop
• CEO Defined: (1) Taking responsibility for yourself and your organization (2) Doing things that are going to help people

Website: http://markmanspeaker.com/

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemarkman

Twitter: @markmanspeaker

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless:

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I had a very special guest on the show today. I have Steve Markman of Markman Speaker Management, LLC. Steve, it's awesome having you on the show.

00:40 – Steve Markman: 

Thanks, Gresh, great to be here.

00:43 – Gresham Harkless:

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Steve so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. With over 30 years of experience in the speaker and conference business, Steve Markman is the founder and president of Markman Speaker Management LLC, a multi-service speaker agency founded nearly 30 years ago. Among his services, Steve conducts customized virtual training where he teaches the processes, strategies, and techniques of successfully attaining speaking engagements that are used to boost visibility and create thought leadership opportunities. Steve has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs, executives, consulting principles, authors and people from all walks of life attain speaking engagements.

He has helped clients in virtually all industries from startups to the Fortune 500. Steve also runs a Speakers Bureau Division, providing keynote speakers for organizations worldwide, covering a wide range of wide array of topics. Prior to launching his firm in 1994, Steve headed up the conference divisions of leading organizations, including Comdex and the Conference Board. Steve, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:00 – Steve Markman:

I'm ready.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome, well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story and we'll let you get started with your awesome work?

01:18 – Steve Markman:

Sure, thanks for the opportunity. So I basically spent a lot of years doing writing and research. I worked for Forbes magazine. I worked for a consulting firm. And then I went to the conference board in New York to do writing and research and publishing articles and so forth for them. And then as happens with many people, it's the right place, right time. There was an opening for someone to create the conferences for the conference board. And my boss came into my office and said, you're it. So I said, okay, sounds good. And that the rest as they say is history. So I actually was recruited by Combex, which was at the time the largest and still was the largest trade show of any kind in North America, attracting 200,000 people.

It was for the computer, personal computer industry. I went up from New York City to where I'm originally from to Boston to run their conference division and went to a couple of other companies. And in 1994, I started my own business. And basically what I was doing was what I had been doing for about a dozen years before that, which was to create the content, the intellectual content of major conferences. And then IBM consulting came to me because I had a business relationship with them on a sponsorship and they said, look, we don't really have good success right now getting speaking engagements. Can you do this for me? So like any good consultant, I said, of course I can.

And so I shifted over in an easy transition from creating conferences to representing the speakers for these conferences. I got IBM consultants into presentations and conferences worldwide, which is what they wanted from London to Shanghai, Tokyo, and everywhere in the US. It was a pilot program that went really well and I thought to myself, this is a business for me. And so I focused ever since then, this was in the mid-90s on doing this, now in my 27th year running marketing speaker management. And that's how it all happened.

04:10 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And kind of like the evolution in the process of it, as you talked about, being in the right place at the right time, and it kind of blossoming and growing from there, and you being able to help out, you know, so many organizations and businesses to be able to do that as well now. Right. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know I touched on it when I read your bio and you did as well too. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you work with clients and what exactly that process looks like?

04:36 – Steve Markman:

Absolutely. So I work for 2 types of clients, individual practitioners, entrepreneurs, and authors, on the one hand, and then on the other hand, I work for mid-size and large companies. So I've worked for, on the side of the larger companies, in addition to IBM, I've worked with Bank of America and Subaru and all kinds of industries of all types, high tech, low tech, you name it, I've worked for a lot of big law firms and small law firms as well, as well as a lot of professional service firms and a lot of PR firms. Many PR practitioners and PR firms hire me as a way to outsource the speaker placement activity that they don't know how to do as well for their clients. And basically I do the work in 2 ways.

I either do all the heavy lifting as I call it, where a company would hire me for 6 months or a year to find the speaking engagements for them do all the research, create the package of proposals that I submit on their behalf, and do all the follow-up work. That's one way. The other way, which I started several years ago, was a more reasonably priced way for people who don't have a big budget, whether they're individuals or small companies, and that's to teach them how to find speaking engagements for themselves.

And so I go through all the processes and techniques and tricks of the trade on the techniques of what they need to do to do a number of the elements that are necessary from how to identify and research the conferences and speaking opportunities that are out there now all virtual but hopefully will change at some point in the near future, as well as knowing what kinds of materials they need to put together in terms of a bio, in terms of what's called a speaker abstract, which is a summary, 2 or 3 paragraphs of what they are actually going to speak about.

And that all goes into the proposal that they need to submit for themselves. And I do that even for large companies where the corporate staff, the typically marketing folks, want to know how to do that if they don't want to bring someone like me in from the outside to do it for them.

07:04 – Gresham Harkless:

Nice, I absolutely appreciate that and kind of like the range of services you provide in terms of somebody that may be able to kind of or have to do either DIY or do done with you as I like to say as well too, or also actually having you on board and being able to kind of outsource and bring you on to have you get speaking organizations and opportunities for those organizations and businesses. And so I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself personally your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:38 – Steve Markman:

So fortunately for me, in terms of my business, what I do is Fairly unusual. The people that typically do what I do, finding speaking engagements, and by the way, I should make sure it's clear that these are, for the most part, unpaid speaking engagements. I have a separate Speakers Division, Speakers Bureau Division, where organizations, associations, universities, and companies need keynote speakers, and they want sort of a star right they want someone who's written several books or has some notoriety and has already established name brand. And they're willing to pay for that. And those speakers want to get paid.

That's in many cases, that's 75 to 100% of their income is doing that. So I work with those kinds of speakers as well. But for the most part, what we're talking about in today's podcast is using speaking at no fee as a way to demonstrate one's expertise generate business leads, and get opportunities for thought leadership. So it's all of those things in one is basically boosting visibility and boosting awareness. And because I've worked with so many different industries, I have a perspective that other folks who might do this don't have. And those other folks that do this are typically PR firms, but their main business, their main talents lie in media relations.

This is, you know, I have sort of developed a niche area where I'm focusing only on speaking I don't do any other public relations I don't do other kinds of marketing, whereas the marketing and PR firms out there, they do that so that's they do that. So that's my selling proposition, value proposition, if you will, having done this for over 30 years and understanding what conference organizers want from doing it for a long time and from having actually done that work myself since I was one of those people. I was a conference organizer. And so when I talk to them and pitch a client or teach a client how to do this, I'm able to bring the perspective of what are the organizers looking for. So you say the right things and you do the right things.

10:05 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:18 – Steve Markman:

Okay. So I would say that to do what I do well, and for anyone who I may train or coach to do it well, you have to be able to accept rejection. It's almost sales. You're not selling yourself in a way that you're making it say you're the greatest thing since white bread or Swiss cheese. You're actually just being persistent because it's so hard. And there's so much competition. You know, the adage that people, you know, One of the biggest fears they have is public speaking. That's probably true, but there are an awful lot of people that do want to speak. And so it surprises me how many people want to speak. And that is something that people have to realize they can't give up. They may be rejected 15, or 20 times, even by the same organization.

And then they hit them again and then it's all timing. It's all, okay, well, we rejected you not because we didn't like the topic, but we rejected you because we just had that topic last year. But it may be that it wasn't a written proposal that was well-written. It was maybe it was a sales pitch. And so they need to just try to figure out why they're getting rejected and not give up. I think some persistence is definitely what I say is for me and for my coaching has always been the success factor.

11:49 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It could be around speaking or some of the advice you give to your clients, or if you hopped into a time machine, it might be something you would tell your younger business self.

12:03 – Steve Markman:

Okay. So I would say that if people often ask me like, how do I find these speaking engagements? How do I do this? And there's a multi-level answer to that. There are all kinds of different ways and the best way like we all do is the magic of Google, right? So you do a search and you can figure that out. But my nugget of the day is ASAE, which stands for the American Society of Association Executives. And that is the association that is made up of all of the many associations that exist in the world. And in this case, it's specifically for one in the US, of which I believe there are about 35,000 associations. This is a huge number.

And they put out a directory and they have a website that even though it's focused on the executives of the associations If you're somebody who wants to speak at an association, which is the most common place to speak, a most common type of venue, they have a directory of all these associations and you can look them up and cross look up. There are other ways to do that, but I think is a good place to start.

13:18 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Steve, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:30 – Steve Markman:

Well, I think what being a CEO means is taking responsibility for yourself and your organization. And in my case, my organization is mostly me. But that means that I have to be responsible, as many entrepreneurs are, for pretty much-doing everything. Right? So I have to do the work, but I also have to get the business. I don't have a large staff that I can say, you know, let's get improved sales by 15% this year. I have to improve sales by 15% if that's the goal. And so I think that that's one thing that it means.

And the other thing it means is, you know, basically doing things that are going to help people. And whether that means selling a product or service that people can use. Yes, at the end of the day, it helps me feed my family and get what I want to do in terms of success. But at the same time, I have satisfaction as I think most CEOs do in doing something that's of value that will help people advance their careers or advance their companies. And so doing good, I think is really as equally important as being a success for yourself.

14:54 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Steve, truly appreciate that definition again. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get out of view and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:10 – Steve Markman:

Sure. Thanks, Gresh. So basically, I just wanted to mention that for anyone listening to this podcast Through the end of June 2021, I am offering a 10% discount for my 2-hour or 4-hour virtual training on how to get speaking engagement. So if anyone wants to avail themselves, They can contact me through my website, which is www.markmanspeaker.com. And I'd be happy to chat with them about anything that they want in the speaking realm for no obligation for the next 6 months. And then if they want the training, I can explain how that works. And happy to talk to anybody about that as well.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I truly appreciate that, Steve. We will have the links and information again in the show notes. And I think sometimes one of the best ways we can be more successful as entrepreneurs and business owners is to lean on the expertise of really great individuals who know their craft and know their business more than anything else. So I truly appreciate you for spending some time, you know, today, of course, for offering, you know, that to our listeners and our readers as well. And I appreciate you again, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal today.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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