Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #131: How To Become A World Class Speaker with Gary Vaynerchuk’s Partner Zach Nadler, CEO of Vayner Speakers

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

It is like the wild wild west out here in the speaking business! The industry is constantly changing and I know from experience how crazy it has been in the last 2 years ALONE! How do we navigate this business? And even better, how do we LEVEL UP?! Zach Nadler, CEO of Vayner Speakers, speaker agent, and partner of Gary Vaynerchuk, joins me today to give an insider perspective on where the industry is going and how to become successful. Listen in for invaluable advice on how to put in the work, embrace patience, and take constructive criticism to totally transform your business!   About The Guest: Zach Nadler is the CEO and co-founder along with Gary Vaynerchuk, of VaynerSpeakers, a disruptive speakers bureau built to help the modern event planner, consulting with organizations hosting events to help provide speakers that will impact audiences in a meaningful way. Prior to working with Gary, Zach worked at CAA for almost 11 years as a Speaker Agent, managing politicians, athletes, nobel prize winners, and F500 execs.   Finding Zach Nadler: Website: https://vaynerspeakers.com/  Email: [e-mail]  Twitter: @ZachNad Instagram: @zachnadler   Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!    To pre-order Overcome Your Villains NOW and get the bonus bundle click here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

People expect that, well, if I get 100,000 Instagram followers, I put out a couple of videos, I get paid once or twice. I can start commanding $50,000. I can be the best speaker in the world. It just takes so much more than that. And I think people aren't patient enough in this business. And I think that that's the number one thing you got to be. You got to be patient. You got to listen.

When you go and realize that somebody's paying to have you up on stage, you have to deliver for them. And things change. And you got to take their feedback to heart. You got to think about what you're doing. You got to internalize your message. And listen to your criticism. Because it's not going to be 100% positive. the negative stuff is what helps you improve.

I'm on this journey with me. Each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close-up. Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today. This is crazy. My first episode ever of creating confidence was with Gary Vaynerchuk.

And today we are lucky enough to have his partner Zach Nadler with us, Zach, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to see you, Heather. Thanks for having me. Okay. I have to read your bio because it's super impressive and I want everyone to understand what you're all about, what you've accomplished. Co-founder and CEO of Vayner speakers, holy cow, CEO, it's a big deal, has built a career helping luminaries share their stories of impact and inspiration with his longtime client and now partner, Gary Vaynerchuk, we've got to dig into that.

Nadler founded Vayner Speakers in 2018, a Speakers Bureau for the Modern Event Planner. He represents bestselling authors, entrepreneurs, CEOs, thought leaders, tastemakers, basically so many ballers that we can't even name them all. Zach spent over nine years serving as leading agent in the Speakers Department at CAA. Guys, that's a huge freaking deal. His journey representing talent began in 07 as vice president of sports and entertainment marketing for Premier Management Group, representing Olympians during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where his clients brought home over 20 gold medals. A graduate of NYU, his career began working

in operations for the Celebrity Players Tour, a native of Longmadow, Mass. I'm a mass person, too. Got to love that. Zach resides in New York City now with his wife, daughter, and their puppy, Lucy, and his hundreds of classic vinyl records. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. And I've got Lucy here with me to make. sure I'm all my disbehavior. Wait, I have to tell you the funniest thing when I read your bio. I'm like, he doesn't name his wife. He doesn't name his daughter.

He names the puppy in the bio. Very, very funny. Of course, the only one that doesn't have a social media account. That's important to note. Okay, Zach, there's a lot to cover here, but I want to take it back to the beginning. How did you even break into this business? How does someone even decide they want to run a speaking company or be an agent? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny.

I think no one, when they're nine, 10 years old, says they want to be a speaker's agent, right? Most people are firefighters, police officers, doctors, things you actually know about. Most people don't even know this is a kind of industry or a career path that you can take. I didn't know it was a business until two years ago. It's so crazy. Yeah. And it's evolved. I mean, 20 years ago, it was not what it is today, right?

20 years ago, unless you were the guy who started famous Amos, right? Unless you were a politician, right? With someone like kind of a cottage industry, you weren't really doing this for a living. Now, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people who do nothing but speaking. So it's completely evolved. I didn't really see it as a career path myself. I was pursuing a career in sports, as you mentioned. And pretty quickly saw that that path.

It's extremely tough to break in while I was having success. When I started working with Olympians, a lot of what you do is speaking engagements, right? They make not that much money from the U.S.OC. from the Olympic teams. So in order to stay competing and keep training, you have to work. And you have to do speaking engagements and clinics and take endorsements. And so I was doing a lot of this and then eventually got recruited to join CIA and pursue solely this. And that was one of my eyes really open to what this industry could be.

And even since then, the industry has evolved, call that 12 years ago. The people who were out there doing speaking engagements aren't the people who are out there doing it now. George Clooney, you can book him for a speaking engagement. He wasn't doing this 10 years ago, let alone 20 or anything like that. So the industries evolved quite a bit, created a lot of opportunity. And so it's a path I didn't expect myself to be taking, but I'm certainly enjoying the ride while doing it. Well, I'm glad that you're enjoying it. Definitely is a bumpy ride, and I want to get into that given that we're both in the event business during a global pandemic, which definitely

is not ideal. Okay, so here's something that stuck out to me when I read your bio. CAA is massive, right? I mean, I think everybody knows CAA. And if you don't, probably George Clooney is with CAA, right? I mean, they literally have the biggest names in the business. That's right. So why would you, when you're at your top of the game at the lead premier agency, say, you know what, I'm just going to roll the dice and go out and start a company, a shoot with Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah, it's a great question. It wasn't the easiest decision, but at the same token, it wasn't that hard when I really thought about it. Obviously, Gary, you know, Gary, he's a serial entrepreneur. It's not that everything he does is perfect, but he has a pretty high success rate. And I started working with Gary in 2009,

but it wasn't the Gary that you see today. So back then, he was a tough guy to sell. And I think that the more he developed and more he built VaynerMedia and his business side, as well as his investments matured, I think he became a different person. And over time, we kind of aligned more and more in terms of how we approach sales, how we approach customer service, how we approach the speaking industry. And so we did a lot of things that I think a lot of other clients of mine weren't doing, a lot of other people weren't really considering, whether it was creative dealmaking, the travel, the crazy, crazy travel he was doing back then. You know, there was a lot of different things that we did that just weren't traditional. And this is a tired old industry. It's been around 50 years,

not much has changed. So Gary and I looked at it and said, well, if we just apply a little bit of innovation, we could probably make an impact. You know, at the time, he had already built VaynerMedia. It was extremely successful. And now it looked at all these other companies he's built. And so it was one of those things. We said, if we're going to do all these other companies, we said, if we're going to do it, we're starting the kind of innovation disruption that you've applied the advertising industry, we're going to be fine. So that was a nice little wrinkle. But at the same thing the world needed was another speaker's bureaus. We said, if we're going to do it, let's do it right. And of course, we didn't realize you were starting the company 18 months before COVID started. So that was a nice little wrinkle. But at the same same token, it gave us a lot of direction and opportunity to kind of build it the way we wanted to. And so, you know, we set out to do just that. We try to be a speaker's girl unlike any other. And we try to just be a little bit different and think about the customer a lot more than I think our competitors tend to do. And that's something that Gary's always done. So it was a natural fit. So the more I thought about it, well, it was tough at least place like CIA, I don't remember the last time I wore a suit, COVID or otherwise. So I think there are some silver linings to it. That is a very exciting point. And that's one thing I love. about Vayner Media is that you can show up in jeans and know that Gary's showing up that same way.

That's pretty cool. So what does it like to work with Gary? Because I know my listeners right now are what they want to know the answer to that question. Yeah. Well, I always see that Gary you see on video is Gary, right? You know this. Like you've seen it even when before a podcast, he's the same person before and after, right? And during. And I think that part of that is the camera is just always on him. But I think that's also just he doesn't have time to try and play a part. He's just always himself. And so I always love to tell people this when people think Gary's just like, you know, extremely exuberant guy. He, of course, is. But he's also the most empathetic personable person you'll ever meet.

And he's just human to the core. So I can remember plenty of times where I'll hop into the car with him. We'll have a 10 minute meeting going in between other meetings he's taking, right? And I hop in and he'll look at me and he's like, hey, how's it going? I'll just go right into like this crazy thing. I got this going out. We've got to talk about this. This is the thing.

You're going to Australia. You're doing this. And it'll just look at me, I don't know. How's it going? And he's just so grounded to know. that like, yeah, there's all this stuff going on, but like there's a relationship. And so I think that that's something that often gets lost. And people don't necessarily always see that side of Gary, especially because it's probably

not, you know, the best 30 second snippet for Instagram. But that's really who he is at the core. And I think everything else he does just stems from that. One of the things that surprised me most, I just hadn't thought about it and having just had the opportunity to meet him a couple of times, he's so intense and so busy. Those were the two things that stuck out to me. And you know, things that, like what you were saying, there's, you're doing this and doing this. And everyone presents themselves maybe on social, but you wonder if it, that was the one thing.

I was just being around him those couple of times saying, wow, I mean, it's overwhelming. I would imagine because he's so busy, he gives you a lot of autonomy in running this company. Yeah, I think he is, you know, he's an extremely amazing person to work with because anytime you ask of him, you get whatever you ask for, unless it's something crazy. But if you're asking something, you know, that, you know, he has no problem doing it and dropping everything. to do it. And at the same time, he is, he's there to kind of support you in whatever, you know, you're building. And I think that goes for any of the Vaynerx companies. He's also the, to your point, he's so busy, but what I give him more credit for is just not wasting time, right? You or I, we'll walk down the hallway to go to the bathroom or go get a glass of water. And maybe we

just collect our thoughts as we're walking down the hall. He's down on his phone in his DMs, checking his emails, checking his text messages, right? That's something that I think is, is so intense about him, but it's such a dedication. He programs everything to five minutes. I always say he can do the fastest consulting as anyone. You can talk to him for 30 days. He's like, all right, I know your problems. I know what you're going through. I can figure it out. Here's what you got to do. People want that from him, but he knows how to listen and actually hear what you're saying really fast, which is tough. Also look at him just the way he's built his businesses and seeing him the way he's traveled, the way he's worked. For a long time, he was doing, you know, basically

up at six, go to the gym. And then from seven until 11 was programmed with meetings. And there were certainly, you know, face down with the kids and call dad, things like that on the calendar. But he programs every minute out. And then there's stuff that happens every day that gets thrown in the middle. And so his admins are incredible because they're able to navigate all that. But he gives them a ton of autonomy too. But I think for Gary, it's so important just to stay available to everyone and honor your word. And I think that to do so, you have to start programming minute to minute. And so he really does that. And I think he certainly changed the last 10 years. You know, he doesn't work weekends the way he used to. He's not traveling, you know, even pre-COVID,

wasn't traveling quite the way we used to do it. The first time was Australia was three cities in 36 hours, right? Or that was the second time. The first time he flew there for eight hours to be in the country for eight hours. So like he doesn't do that stuff anymore. But I think he knows how to be efficient with his time. And that's what's made him so successful. He's, I think, 45 now and work probably as much as a 60-year-old CEO. So I think when you kind of compare it, it's pretty wild to think about. One of the things that when people get a chance to see your face, they're going to say, how did this guy, he's so young? How did he get so lucky to get the opportunity. You know people are going to say that. However, I do want to add just my own experience

in this business and the speaking business over the past couple of years. You have an unbelievable name and reputation that you've built on your own. Has nothing to do with you. I mean, I hear it from everyone, Zach, and then I've had the opportunity to directly work with you and see it. So, what is it about you that you think you did things differently that you were able to advance so quickly and create opportunities in a reputation like this? Yeah. Well, first off, I'm not as young as I look. just daily Botox. But I think, you know, it's something where we kind of built the business around a simple idea, right?

No two events are the same. Let's not treat them the same. No two speakers are the same. Let's not treat them the same either. And I think that's something that gets lost in the shop with a lot of our competitors, right? I think a lot of competitors are looking to just scale their business, just rinse and repeat, do the same thing over and over again. 45 minute speech, 45 minute speech, 45 minute speech.

You know, you know this having gone to a million events. Not every event's the same. Some events want to do things differently. Some speakers want to do things differently. So we just try to adapt that. And that's kind of been always been my mentality. Right. I've always tried to understand what makes this event special, what makes this speaker special and different. What do they want to do? And how can we make that happen? And it doesn't always work. But if you understand what the goal is, you can get a lot closer than just trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. So we built the business off that. But that's something I've just always done in my career. Personally, I just work hard all the time. You know, I think it's just important to know, obviously have boundaries that you can step away from work. But at the same token, I, you know, I've been working since, you know, I was working 50 hours a week in college to get to where I am. And I think that it's, it's, you know, what's the old expression? Like luck and opportunity is chance, right?

It's all coming together at the same time there. You have to be ready for it, but you also have to put the time in. I know our mutual friend Jesse gets there, always talks about it, the bus ride, right? You got to be ready when that bus gets there. And I've always just, you know, worked hard, kept my head down, done what I was supposed to do. And then there was obviously a lot of right place, right time, right? You can't predict things like COVID. You can't predict things like the 0809 recession.

9-11 hurt the hospitality industry right before I jumped into that. I think there's a lot of things that you can't really expect. But at the same token, you've got to be ready, willing, and able when the opportunity is there. And that's something I've always tried to pride myself on. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest Registered Agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs

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slash confidence for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash confidence to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash confidence. I want to speak to. I love giving examples or story to back up comments that people make because it really brings it to life. And I have one experience with you that really illustrates, I believe, how you do operate your event business, speaker business differently. I will never forget this. The first time you and I met was on a conference call with a number of people. I had no idea. I mean, I knew who you were, but I didn't know you. I didn't know your personality.

And I'm definitely a creative person. And I remember we were going into this where I was going to interview Sarah and Jesse on stage in Boston at hypergrowth. And it was you and your team, Sarah's team and me. And I remember we were talking about how this could play out and what this could look like. And I remember I wanted, you know, can Jesse and I come out and have a wrap up? Can we, you know, let's not make this the same boring conversation that we've all heard 200 times. How do we make this a little bit different? And you sound, you don't know this, but when you don't see you, you sound extremely professional and more CAA, right? Like more I was picturing you in the suit and, you know, you're representing Jesse Itzler and you're Gary the Intertucks partner.

And so what I loved about that was, listen, we didn't say yes to all my ideas. However, what I love is you guys came back with your own ideas and we ended up, in my opinion, but feedback that we also got, that was such an exciting interview because we did it totally out of the box, completely different down to Sarah revealing that video of her scaling that hot air balloon with Richard Branson that Jesse had never seen before and he almost lost it on the stage. He couldn't even watch the video. And then that rapid fire round, question round with them at the end was literally the funniest thing I've ever seen at a live event. And I just love Zach that you embrace. Let's run with this. Let's make this unique and different. Well, and for those listening and

not watching, I'm smiling year to ear as Heather's talking and nodding with her because she's 100%. I think that was such a killer event. And I'm like, I'm actually right now probably about 10 miles from wherewith that took place. And that was, that was such a tremendous conversation. And I think you had so much energy coming into it. And it was like, great, let's use that energy. How do we make this happen? How do we make this special? Because when you have people like Sarah and Jesse, like, they're not boring, they're anything but, but it's really easy to make them boring. And I think you coming in was like, great, we need to match that energy. We got to figure out what we can do to make this special because oftentimes, and as an agent, I don't get any opportunity to get creative.

It's more about just figuring out how do we get it done, right? It's really more just the mechanics and the functionality. But for something like that, you came in and you also were so knowledgeable. You understood a new Sarah and Jesse. You came in and you did your homework. And then on site, you matched and then overcame over the top with energy. And it was just so tremendous that when all three of you were on stage, it just came out. And I think oozed all over the audience.

I think they loved it. And I think that that was something that is hard to replicate. But that's obviously it was a great example of when it all works. And I think in certain circumstances, we're not able to get quite so creative and it is a little bit more functional. But I think we do our best to try and figure out what can we do to make things special. Because plenty of people, I will tell you, saw that event and then we want to do something like that. But then their butt, right, the comma butt becomes something we're like, okay, but then it's not going to be anything like it. It's like totally different.

And so it's always those things that's every event has their little things. They just want to be special, different, and unique. And you got to kind of lean in on those things. And you are one of those things for it drifts, hypergrowth. And that was such a tremendous event. It kind of makes me a little sad now thinking how long ago it was and how seemingly close in time and proximity I am right now to it, yet it seems like it was so long ago.

Oh, my gosh. It was almost two years ago, which is so crazy. September 2020, 2020, 2019. 2019, right before the pandemic. One thing I learned from your speaker that day, which I want to share with everybody, because it was a really powerful lesson. I am a rookie speaker, a professional speaker with only two years in this business,

Jesse Itzler obviously has a much longer career in this business than I do. I'll never forget. I was so proud of all of us, all the team, everyone. And as Sarah and I got up to walk off stage, we were high-fiving and so excited, you know, smiling ear to ear. What I didn't realize is we got back to stage and I said, what happened to Jesse? And I looked at Sarah and she said, oh, he's out there shaking hands with everybody in

the audience. I said, what? And I came back out around to stick my head out to see. and he was literally walking the perimeter of the stage to shake and high five everyone he could reach before we had to be off of that stage. And it blew me away that all I could think about was me and I'm so proud of me. And all he could think about was imparting more gratitude on an audience. I just thought that was really powerful lesson for me. Well, and just to make it even more extreme, the context of that.

And this was something that I didn't know what we had, we had put that event together. But timing was, I guess, I don't know if you want to call it our friend or foe, but Jesse had run 84, 84, 85 miles like that the day before, two days before. So when he showed up, he was wearing sandals with socks on and he didn't know what he was going to do. Like he was barely able to walk. Yet that entire interview took place in a seated position and he stood up and was standing and shaking all those hands and didn't, you know, grimace, wasn't complaining.

But that's just who Jesse is. I mean, he, you know, I think he had so much adrenaline going and had such a good time. That was such a great crowd. It was in a theater. It was a really cool environment. Okay. So now let's cut to COVID. Literally the worst thing.

I mean, first world problems, and I recognize that as I know you do, but our business disappeared overnight. How does Zach Nadler manage that when you're leading Vayner speakers walking into a global pandemic? Yeah, it wasn't fun. I'll tell you that much. I can tell you, we, first of, virtual stuff, we've been doing virtual since 2012. I remember Gary and I did a virtual event. We streamed, it was either Hungary or Poland, and he streamed on a Sunday morning at 5 o'clock in the morning. I'm meeting him at my old office.

He's streaming in using Cisco, you know, telepresents with this, you know, big screen and all this technology. It wasn't like a laptop or a simple computer on a webcam, right? It was really 2012. It was intense. So we've been doing this for a long time. But also when we were doing, you know, video conferences for the last couple of years, Gary's office is a studio. He has like a cameraman who can come in and just stream to anywhere he wants right away. But when we're in COVID, we're all different places.

So we had to really adapt to that. And I think more importantly, we had to, you know, allow time and be patient for our customers to adapt. Because it was, you know, if you remember that March and April, no one wanted to do anything virtual. First you had to, you know, FaceTime with your grandmother and your sister-in-law and figure out all these things, how that works. And then you could be like, okay, now I think I can make this work. And I'd pay someone to actually be on a Zoom. So it was certainly a heavy lift. again, just some context around it.

You know, my personal world, you mentioned my daughter. She was born March 6th last year, five days before New York City went into quarantine. So I was also on paternity leave as all of this stuff went down. I give a million thanks to my entire team because everyone picked me up. We were working crazy hours because that first month was just moving dates. We're just, all right, great, this isn't happening. So let's figure out what we're going to do. And I think it was really something where what we learned during that time was the importance of flexibility.

right? We tried to say very early on, we don't know what's going to happen now. We don't know what's going to happen next. Let's try to be resourceful. Let's try to understand where people are coming from. Let's be flexible and reasonable and reasonable, right? Because some people are going to come to us and say, oh, my God, the sky is falling. And other people are going to come and say, we're just going to wait this out. But we have to understand that this is affecting both the customer and the event as well as our clients. And so it's really important to kind of just kind of take a step back, take a deep breath and figure out what was right for each and every opportunity. And thankfully, I I would say 99 times out of 100, we wound up with great success in terms of either postponing an event, re-booking it, turning it to a virtual opportunity. There were a few that just fell apart for one reason or another. And like you said, it's, you know, its first world problems. I think businesses fell apart during that time. You know, people died. There were real things that were going on in the world.

And we just tried to kind of do our part. And I think there were some speakers where I heard of one bureau that literally turned into a podcast agency within six weeks. And we're like, well, your business probably wasn't going to work if you were converting to a podcast agency within six weeks of, you know, a pandemic. And now we look at it and we're doing better business than we were before the pandemic. So whatever we were doing clearly was working, but I think it also was a testament to all the people out there who were just ready, willing, and able to kind of turn things back on when it was possible and get back out there. And I think that the one thing this events industry has shown time and time again is that we are ready and willing to

have a good time. And people want to be back together. They want to congregate. They want to be at an event and extra person experience something live. And that's something you just can't replicate. And I don't think we needed a global pandemic to prove that. But I think we're all now, you know, completely aware of it. So, Zach, you're in such a better, because I have such a myopic opinion on what's happening with the event business because I only see it through the lens of me. You're dealing with so many speakers, so many companies. Where do you see the speaking business going? Where is it right now? Where do you see it moving next? Yeah, it's interesting. I think we're in a couple different places. I think over the last year and a half, we've seen that different parts of the industry are rebounding at different times.

People were kind of reacting differently. Now we're looking at it. And internationally, I think there are going to be things that are slower to come back than domestically in the U.S. Because the vaccines are more prevalent here and they aren't internationally. So there are some places where it's not safe to have an event. But what I've seen is that the events industry as a whole has been very resilient. And first off, that's going to be like the number one conference theme. So to any speaker out there, if you're working on a speech topic, resilience is going to work.

right? So just work around that. But I think that we're going to see, and we already have, that this fall events are happening. They're already starting to happen. I think the larger events are going to start coming back this fall. I think the full-scale festivals and things like that will probably trickling a little later. I think a lot of people are waiting it out and saying, you know, let's just be safe about this. Maybe we have our employees back this fall part-time. Maybe we start doing events again in January. But I think that there is a real demand for events and for people to get back out there. And I think people have been wanting to, and we've seen this. I mean, we have some events that we've booked in 2019, we're supposed to be spring 2020, right? Then they get pushed to fall. Then they get pushed to

this spring. They get pushed to this fall. And I think people just don't want to give up. People want to have their event. They want to bring their teams together. They want to be with other people. And so that's just going to happen one way or another. It's just a matter of when and how. And I think some events are saying we're going to take all the precautions in the world. Spoke to someone last night and they said, we are going to require everyone who attends the event. Speaker and attendee is vaccinated. That wasn't something I've heard before. Some events are saying, we're just literally doing whatever the government tells us to do, like what we have to legally abide. So we see everything in between. And I think that it's coming back and I think it's coming back

strong. Everyone I talked to in our industry, they're all saying the same thing, right? We're right back where we were pre-pandemic. And I think that that probably will cool down a little bit once we get to Thanksgiving because just like we've had, you know, Zoom fatigue, we'll probably have burnout again in the fall. But I do think that this event industry, this is something that that'll be right back where it was. I think January 2020, as long as things don't get worse as long as they get better and then people stay safe, I think we'll be right back to hanging out together, grabbing drinks at the bar after the keynote session, making plans to have breakfast with someone the next morning. I think that's really here right on the horizon.

But I think the thing that I'm most curious about is what happens to the speakers world, because I think some speakers are saying this is great that I can stay home and do this. Well, are there going to be opportunities virtually? Probably, probably more than there were pre-pandemic, but would there be as many as there are today, probably not. And I think other events are saying, we need to have the biggest and best event ever, because now our attendees are telling us, we're only going to one or two events a year. We're not going to five to ten. So I think that there are going to be things that change and we're just the beginning of that. And I'm really curious to see and excited because I think this is

when innovations really come out of problems. It's when people react and respond to a problem and then it allows for new things to pop up. And so we haven't seen everything shake out from it. But what I can tell you is, from my point of view, things are looking up. I'm so glad to hear that. And it definitely is consistent. I'm still getting book primarily for virtuals, which like you mentioned, is disappointing to me because I just, I want in real life. I want to be with people, right? I'm so ready for it. You need it.

I need it. I'm definitely missing it. However, you know, like you said, with the asterisk, as long as everybody's being safe and does what's right, you know, to make themselves comfortable. I did an event for entrepreneur organization, South Florida, live about a month ago in person. So it was my first one in about a year and whatever, you know, three months. It was like magic. That's the one thing that I do want everyone to know. The energy, excitement, the gratitude that I just felt from every single person there,

it was truly magical. So whenever you can get to in a live event, get there. And are you seeing that as well at the events that you've gone to so far? The first event I went to, the first time I saw Gary since the pandemic started, he was recording an event in a corporate studio and happened to be around the corner of my apartment. So I was like, how can I miss this? opportunity. So I go over there, there were seven people in the audience, okay? The production team was as big as the audience. And yet that felt like there were 7,000. It was just incredible how

energized everyone was, just being in a room together. And I think it's something we all missed. And so I think you're 100% right. And that's why I don't have major concern about the industry is because once people see it again, they're just like right back and they're like, oh my God, I've been missing this. So I think it will be there. And I think you're going to still see, you know, virtual stuff booking even into 2022. But I think the long. longer we go, the more events will happen. And I think what's going to be really funny, all these virtual events that started during the pandemic are going to then convert to live. They're going to go in person, right? Because then they're going to be like, oh, we're missing

something. Our attendees tell us they want to get together. They want to meet in person because they've only had this virtual relationship. So I think that's what's going to happen next, which I think is great because that just means more events. I've already heard of some places saying they don't have availability in certain cities at certain times. So like, I love hearing that because that just means like if there's no venues, there's a lot of events happening. And so it's exciting to think that people are already ready to get back together. And so, you know, I think it's, some people will probably take it slow and wait until next year, maybe even mid-2020. But when you're ready, I think you'll see that it's just, it's tremendous to be together again. If your anxiety,

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more than anyone, what advice can you give someone who is an up-and-coming speaker? How do they break into the business? How do they become the next Gary Vaynerchuk? Well, Gary's a great kind of role model for a lot of speakers because of how famous and successful he's been, but also how long it took, right? People look at it and say, well, you know, in 2010, that's where, you know, 2011, we thank you economy. These books are coming out, crush it. And that's how we got famous. And that was when he started doing like speaking. Well, he had been on YouTube for 10 years prior to that. So there was so much that goes into being and building the brand of Gary that become the speaker of Gary. And I think that people don't necessarily see it that way. So I think people expect that,

well, if I get 100,000 Instagram followers, I put out a couple of videos, I get paid once or twice. I can start commanding $50,000 so I can be the best speaker in the world. It just takes so much more than that. And I think people aren't patient enough in this business. And I think that that's the number one thing you got to be. You got to be patient. You got to listen. When you go and realize that somebody's paying to have you up on stage, you have to deliver

for them and things change. And you got to take their feedback to heart. You got to think about what you're doing. You got to internalize your message. And listen to your criticism because it's not going to be 100% positive. The negative stuff is what helps you improve. And I think, you know, things like the Q&A, you can learn so much from. You also have to kind of realize you can't just go out there with the same speech every time.

You've got to tweak it a little bit here and there. You've got to make yourself special, unique, and different. And the hardest part of that is, it's a lot harder to do that now than it was 10, 5, you know, two years ago. There's more speakers than ever before. So how do you make yourself different from the next person? And your personal story is yours and yours alone, but you have to really bring that out in a way that's going to impact an audience. So it's not easy. But I think the more time you put into it, I think I'm sure you've seen this yourself, have. the more you're out there, the more comfortable you feel, the better response you get, sometimes you feel it, sometimes you don't, but even the fact that you feel that there was

better energy from yourself or not, that is like part of the process. And I think Gary hasn't written speech and God knows how long, if ever, right? But every time he gets up stage, I think he still feels the adrenaline and excitement. And I think the more you get out there, the more comfortable you are with it. And then you can just kind of jump out there and dive into it. But I think people try to do that right out of a gate and you're not ready for it. And that's why the reps are important. So it's It's all just about really giving yourself the opportunity to get better, but listen to the feedback afterwards. I completely agree with you.

And one of the things that I do, and I encourage everyone to do this, it doesn't matter if your speaker or what you do, ask for reviews and recommendations of your work. That's when you'll find out what someone really thinks. They might not offer it up that, you know what, she didn't nail that or she didn't connect to the audience today the way I thought she would. If you don't ask, you're not going to find out. I have found out some constructive criticism that I don't believe I would have received if I wasn't so, I didn't follow up so much with a client to hear. And I ends up getting on a phone call. And she said to me,

she said, Heather, you're a great speaker, blah, blah, blah. However, you know, the butt, we didn't feel there was enough actionable advice given. You know, very specific things that I could have, that I could have fixed. But I didn't go into it with clarity on what is the ultimate goal. What it, So that's one of the things that I've learned is it's setting expectations the same way you would in a business deal, right? Is it just because you're going to give a speech, you can't plug in play, who is the audience? What is their ultimate goal? The person in charge, what do they want the audience to be saying when you're finished? And had I known, I want them to have three actionable steps that can go put into play that's going to drive more revenue for 2021.

Boom, now we're clear. And you can accomplish that. But you don't find that stuff out if you're not asking. You're 100% right. And I think that it's hard to do because sometimes you want to kind of just go in and say like, well, they clapped for me. So I must have been great. And you don't want to hear anything negative.

And it's hard because I think no one wants to be told they did something wrong, especially if they're working for someone. Right. If you're getting paid to be somewhere, you want to deliver and usually over deliver. But I do think it's important. I think, you know, one of the things I often ask groups when I'm working with them is who have you had in the past, what did you like about them and what didn't? Great question.

It speaks to kind of what worked and what didn't. Maybe there was an amazing speaker, but they didn't. like that person because it wasn't actual items. Or sometimes I hear this all the time. There's too many like lessons. It's just point after bullet point. And it's like, okay, well, then that helps me understand. You want someone who's more concrete or someone who's more abstract. And I think that there are different styles. There's different content. There's different context. And I think that all of that stuff goes into play. And I think people also need to realize they got to be authentic to themselves. And I think a lot of people try to be someone else when they're on stage. And I think

the audiences, they can see right through that. So you got to be yourself. And I know, like, Heather, you are 100% unabashedly yourself on stage, the same energy you always have. And that's what kind of brings it to life, right? And I think if you come out there and you try to be someone, you're not, the audience sees right through you and then you start to feel that and you start to pull back or you start to lean into it and go the other direction. So there's so many different things that can happen. But I think you're 100% right because if you ask and also, I always remind people, be respectful of event planners, right? Usually when you walk off the stage, they still have an event happening. When they're done with the event, they still have to do the event

recap. So if you give them a couple days, then you can usually get their attention. You can get a couple of minutes with them and really understand what worked or what didn't. And then use that to figure out how you can make yourself and your speech better the next time around. Have you ever been in a situation, which, and just so everyone knows, you and your team are very involved behind the scene day up. You're there. You're on site. You're managing everything. I think people often forget of what's happening behind the actual stage. There's so much going on. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you've had a speaker about to take a stage, freak out and say, I'm too scared, I can't do this. How do you coach someone who gets last minute nerves?

I've never had someone not go on stage. That would probably be, that would be pretty bad. I mean, I've had people with last minute wardrobe just this decisions, you know, whether it's Jesse deciding, do I wear a T-shirt or a polo shirt or Al Pacino deciding whether or not to wear a scarf, like little things like that. Usually once they get on the plane, they know what they're getting themselves into. But I certainly have had people with last minute, like, we need to change this, or we have to add this, or I don't think I can use this slide anymore, or I change my mind and I want to add this video. That stuff, I think, you know, happens all the time. It's just about reassurance, right? I'll never put someone in a position to fail, right? My goal is to make sure that it's a success

for my client, for the speaker, as well as for the customer and their event. I want their attendees to walk away happy, and I want the customer to walk away happy. And I think that it's just about setting the right expectations. And then what we try to do is make sure that we have the information before we even present an offer to someone. I want to know all the details about the event. So that when I'm going to a speaker and saying, hey, this is what they want from you, it's what they actually want. And that the speaker understands right out of the gate, I'm comfortable talking about this, right? Because sometimes I say, I don't want to tell that story. I don't want to go down that road. Or this theme isn't me. And I think that that's something

that I think it's tough to do when you try to be flexible and malleable with a customer, because we want to be able to say yes to everything. But the reality is that, not everything should be said yes to, right? Gary's not going to come out and talk about, you know, of the economy in France. Jesse's not going to come out and talk about microbiology. But if somebody were to ask that, I actually, this was a scary part. I once had someone book the wrong person. It was a very simple day. It was like John Harris or something simple like that. And they booked the wrong John Harris. We found out pretty quickly. But it was a very funny moment because had the wrong person showed up to talk about things that they were going to talk

about, that was what threw the whole thing off. They were like, you sure this is meant for me. this isn't a topic I've ever spoken about before. I could probably work on something, but it's just not something I've done before. And that was what we started to figure it out. So it certainly happens, but we try to get that stuff out of the way before they hit the side of the stage because that could get pretty scary, pretty fast. Oh my gosh, that would have been a complete debacle. Okay, so two things that come up a lot for me, I'm sure they come up for you, is people who want to be speakers. One, they don't know what to charge. So how do you work with charging, pricing, virtual, on-site, and taking someone to the next level?

And then people want to become a Vayner speaker. People want an agent. What is your best advice to those people on how they make that happen? Yeah. I mean, I think there's no formula for success in our world, right? You know this. It's something where everyone has their own path for success. Some people, it's a lot faster than others. I think it's just important to kind of put in the work and do what you got to do, but be patient. Not everyone even needs an agent. There are a lot of amazing speakers who don't have a speaker's agent, right? Magic Johnson, one of the legendary speakers in industry, does not have a speaker's agent. Now, Kessi always been Magic Johnson, probably. So I think that's a little bit different.

But I think that there are a lot of successful people out there who have done this and made a career out of it without an agent. So I think there's a lot of people who think they need an agent that don't. I also think it's something where in terms of kind of what you price yourself, it's really the value of your time, right? Are you comfortable hopping on a plane laying over in Chicago on your way to Fargo, North Dakota for a, you know, a 45-minute talk to, you know, to an association in the middle of February, right?

Like if you're not willing to do that, right? That's a miserable trip. Who wants to get on the, like stay overnight both ends. Like that doesn't sound like fun. So if there's not a number that gets you excited to do that, then your fees too low. So it's always about just kind of setting expectations and what it makes sense for you. So most people, they speak on the side of doing other things, right, whether they run a business, right? Whether they're an author and they're constantly writing, they're always doing something else.

So it's what else would they be doing and where's the value proposition? So if I'm running a business, well, I can't go out for five thousand. or 10,000, if I have all these customers and employees I'm beholden to, and the company would lose that kind of money if I'm not working. So it's about what the value of your time would be otherwise. And I think a lot of people try and set fees kind of arbitrarily. And I think it's important to have a number that makes sense for you, but shows that this is what your value is and this is what you're willing to do. It's something where you want to be competitive if you want to be out there a lot. You don't want to be out there a lot, raise your fee. Less people are going to come calling. But if you're not getting

calls and getting inundated to where you're getting asked, are you free for this date? Can you do this event? And you're saying, no, I'm booked already. It's probably not right to raise your fee because what are raising it for? But when you get so busy that you have to turn things down, you're like, oh, I wish I could do your event, but I have two others that day. That's when it makes sense to raise your fee. An old adage in our business, it's always easier to raise your fee than lower your fee. So if you raise it too early and then you try to lower your fee, people like, oh, they're obviously not that busy, that it doesn't make sense, right? They're not that good. So there are little things like that that I think go into the psychology of it, but it's important to just be intentional with your decision

making, right? Thinking about what your time is worth and pricing yourself accordingly. One of the things that I'm finding difficult, go back to my time in corporate America, I knew how to forecast, I knew what my pipeline was, I knew what the trajectory was. It was so clear. Now, especially because of COVID, this business, I feel like it's much more challenging. I'm so concerned to say yes, because I'm getting requests for 2020. on-site request. And I'm so concerned to say yes, because I'm going to say my fee is probably going to be a lot higher by that point in time. It's difficult as a speaker. And what advice can you give us? When do you know that tipping point's going to come? And when do you price yourself out of it?

Or do you say yes to the business? Yeah. I mean, it's a bird in the hand, right? Rather have dates than not have dates and regret the date you didn't take. And I always think, too, we just saw this today. We got a group who reached out to us. They had one of my clients at an event in January, It was January 2020 and they reached out and they said, we want to have that person back January 2020. They were our last speaker. We're not going to be our first speaker next year, which is a really cool idea. And that person's fees have changed because how busy they were over this time.

And I think that that's something you got to take into account. And so you can't necessarily hope your fees go up, right? You have to realize, is there going to be something that's going to drive my fee up? Is it, do I have a book coming out? Is there a particular opportunity that's going to change everything for me? Otherwise, I'd say, keep booking. And then once you start turning stuff down, that's a lot. when you raise your fate because no good speaker will ever cancel an event for a higher paying event.

That's just bad ethics. And we, you know, that's a, that's a faux pa, right? Should not be doing that. We don't recommend that for any client. But I think the other thing is there are plenty of times where a client says, I wish I could do that. But and that's where we try to get creative first off. Now with virtual, can we make that a virtual event? Can we pre-record something?

Or what does travel look like? Right. We're trying to shoehorn something in right now between an events in Boston and Chicago. or we're trying to jam an event in Las Vegas for someone, right? These things aren't so easy. But at the same token, it's all about what you're willing to do. And, you know, I always often say this, you know, when I'm talking to customers, like, well, can you ask this person if they be willing to do this?

It's like, well, you don't have a date. You don't know what time it is. We don't have all the details. And those things make sense. Right, if I invite you to my wedding, you're going to say, oh, sure, I'd love to come to your wedding. But if I say, okay, it's tomorrow. And it's in Guatemala.

Then you're just like, wait a second. I don't even know if I can get to Guatemala tomorrow. So these are the kind of things that go into your decision-making process. And I think it's better to have stuff on the calendar and let new opportunity, one or two of them go by the wayside you can't do it rather than say, I wish I took those because I'm not as busy as I thought I would be. You can always make yourself more busy with other opportunities and things like that to fill in the blank. So my recommendation would be to take the good ones. Don't say yes to everything. But if it makes sense, say yes.

And then when you're so busy, that's when you start raising your fee. And I think you're going to see a lot of people raising the fee out of the pandemic because they're going to say, say, like, you want me to get out of my pajamas, I got to get on a plane. That's when things are going to change. And I think we're on the precipice of that. So I'm not looking forward to it. But at the same time, customers won't love it, but clients will. So we'll make do. Right, because then you're actually the bearer of the bad news and or the negotiator that gets to make that happen. Exactly. It's a matter of getting ahead of it so that we don't have anyone upset. But I think it's also about being realistic. And I think we keep telling people, you know, right now people are kind of all

over the place. They don't know what's going to happen. So it's really about just being prepared for it and not being so fixed in your ways and really being ready for anything. And I think that's when you're really be ready to react when something changes is when you're just prepared that things are going to keep changing. So, Zach, who are the people that should be reaching out to you? Because I know right now there's people listening. They're saying, oh, I might want to do an event in 2022. How do I get a hold of Zach? Who are the people that should be contacting you? Yeah, I mean, look, event planners change all over the place. Whether it's an actual event planner or an agency, we work with all sorts. We also work with all their speakers, bureaus. But nowadays, I think what's the

What's so cool is people in the events world come from all over. So we can be dealing with the VP of marketing somewhere, the vice president of sales, the CEO, or an executive assistant. We work with people all over the place. And so we love to hear from different people about their events and see what we can do to help. Because really, I think it's fun. We learn things like just like that drift event. We've gone back and worked with drift and other events and their events change.

And I think that it's about adapting to it. So we love hearing about new events and trying to find ways to make their audiences happy. So anyone and everyone and everyone should reach out. And sure, I mean, if you're a speaker too, We have a very small roster. We have 18 clients. We're always looking, but at the same token, we're a very small team. We've been around for two and a half years, so bear with us.

But I think it's something where we want to be the biggest in the world, but know that it takes time to scale the unscalable. And that's really what we're aiming to do. How does everybody get a hold of you? Zach at VaynerSpeakers.com, come to our website. Hit me up on all social media. I'm always available. Usually on the phone or in my emails, but I will check, I promise.

So by all means, we get back to everyone. So hit us up, let us know what we can do for you. Zach, thank you. so much for your time today. So appreciate you and can't wait to see you in real life. Can't wait, Heather. Thanks so much for having me.