Out Of The Firery Breath Of Dragons An Ideas Is Born

I’m often asked how I come up with business ideas and while I provide a list of tactics for finding business ideas it’s sometimes easy to examine a real example. So here’s the business idea I’ve just come up with.

The business idea: Matching Speakers To Engagements.

Hardly a new idea though, but the difference is that it would match non-celebrity speakers to those requiring a speaker but without the big budget required for celebrity speakers. I would also look at a different revenue stream to the current speakers bureaus as with a low to zero budget there’s little margin for the bureau to take a cut. To keep costs down it could be implemented as a website and the revenue could come from advertising, or charging the speakers to list their profiles.

So where does this idea come from?

The idea comes from a mixture of my morning reading in particular Connected Internet’s story about the free dating site Plenty of Fish and Rachel Elnaugh’s post No More Mrs Nice Guy in which she says:

In just the past week, … several requests to travel the length and breadth of the country to speak to various small ‘non-profit making groups’ about entrepreneurship – again no fee;

Combining that with the fact that I’ve done some public speaking at such events – for example at Bath University’s Entrepreneurship course – to help raise my profile and I know a good number of other non celebrity entrepreneurs would also appreciate the change to get more experience public speaking and I see a win/win/win opportunity. The organisation looking for a low cost speaker can find one, the speakers looking for experience can gain exposure and instead of point blank refusing, Elnaugh and fellow celebrity speakers can refer the organisation to an alternate source of speakers.

So do you think it’s a good business idea? Would you like to know what I’d do next? Answers below.

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• 1

  Happy to send them all to you John !!!

  Trouble is, they want a ‘name’ to attach to their event – and believe me, it really does help ticket sales/get bums on seats at events for the organiser, not to mention much greater publicity for their organisation/cause – yet no one can see the value in that.

  This ‘we’re a non-profit making organisation’ line seems to exempt anyone from making the effort to think commercially.

  Rachel

  Rachel Elnaugh on September 27th, 2007
• 2

  I agree many do want a ‘name’ however not all of them do – I’m not exactly famous now – let alone famous when I spoke to students on the entrepreneurship course.

  Even without a name they can still draw a crowd though – they just need to think more commercially (as you say). For example my brother and I spoke at the ACCU conference a few years back and despite it being a conference for software engineers and us being relatively unknown we still drew quite a considerable crowd and got a lot of positive feedback.

  The problem with many non profits (and a lot of small businesses too) was summed up nicely by Oscar Wilde:

  “Nowdays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”

  John on September 27th, 2007
• 3

  Brilliant idea. It’s the one area that seems to be missing in the “other than celebs” speaking world. I think most speakers would use a reliable agent or resourse that could accurately match their talents to an audience.
  I certainly would.

  Steve

  Steve Halls on September 28th, 2007
• 4

  I think it’s a great idea. I do a lot of talks at Rotary, social clubs etc and for me, as a hypnotist, it’s a much easier way to promote what I do and educate people than arranging workshops. I’m lucky in that hypnosis does tend to get bums on seats – but it’s easier to get them there as part of an existing group than to build up the enthusiasm to try something different.

  Sharon Stiles on October 2nd, 2007
• 5

  Sharon,

  Thanks, it’s had a lot of positive feedback – I might even have to do it myself!

  John on October 2nd, 2007