Ep. 059 — How Speaker Bureaus Really Work — Insider Advice from Ryan Giffin

Release date: April 13 , 2026

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

Weekly highlights from The Speaker’s Edge — a Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production hosted by Roddy Galbraith. Learn how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact — in business, on stage, and in life.

Listen or watch the episode:

• 🎧 Audio: Apple Podcasts
• 🎧 Audio: Spotify Podcasts
• 🎥 Video: YouTube
• 📘 Learn more about becoming a speaker or coach: MaxwellLeadership.com/JoinTheTeam
• ▶ Browse episodes & resources: MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge

This Week’s Big Idea

Most speakers think about speaker bureaus the wrong way. In this episode, Ryan Giffin — who spent over a decade as an agent at Premier Speakers Bureau in Nashville — pulls back the curtain on how bureaus actually work, what agents are looking for, and what speakers can do (and must avoid) to get on their radar. The biggest insight is deceptively simple: bureaus don't create speakers from scratch. They take existing momentum and multiply it. If you're not yet ready for a bureau, this episode tells you exactly what "ready" looks like — and how to get there.

Key Takeaways

• Bureaus primarily serve the event client, not the speaker — understanding this changes everything about how you approach them.

• The fastest path to a bureau's attention is having a client ask about you by name. The second is a direct introduction from a fellow speaker.

• Bureaus take momentum and multiply it — they cannot create something out of nothing. Get your own traction first.

• Never go around a bureau to contact their clients directly. It destroys trust instantly and gets you blacklisted.

• Invest in a professional speaker reel equal to your current speaking fee — one booking pays it back completely.

• Know your "aha moments" — the lines or ideas where audiences grab their phones to write something down. Those are your selling points.

• Position yourself as a speaker in your social content by framing stories from a speaker's perspective. It changes how people recommend you.

• The speaking life requires flexibility, thick skin, and a willingness to do hard things — but the purpose that drives you is what makes it worth it.

Quote of the Week

"What bureaus are excellent at is taking momentum and multiplying it." — Ryan Giffin

Resources & Practice

This week, honestly assess where you are on the spectrum from "emerging" to "bureau-ready":

1. Do you have a track record of paid bookings, positive testimonials, and genuine momentum?
2. Are you positioning yourself as a speaker in your online content — or just as someone with good ideas?

Then take one action:

• Watch three to five of the best keynote speaker reels on YouTube (search "motivational keynote speaker reel") and study the formula: third-person narration, preparation footage, a key content moment, audience reaction, a clear takeaway.
• Identify your own "aha moment" — the one thing audiences consistently stop to write down or talk about after you speak. That is what you lead with.

Bureau relationships are built on trust and track record. Start building both now, long before you make the call.

Get the companion guide here > MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge

Learn about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team: maxwellleadership.com/speak

Full Transcript (Ep. 059: How Speaker Bureaus Really Work — Insider Advice from Ryan Giffin (Part 1))

Released: April 13, 2026

This transcript was auto-generated. It may contain minor errors. *Copy text adds attribution automatically

Roddy Galbraith:
Hey guys, welcome back to the Speaker's Edge podcast — the podcast specifically designed to help you learn from some of the world's very best speakers and communicators so you can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. I'm your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith, and I'm thrilled you've chosen to join us today. We've got a great episode today — in fact, it's going to be another two-parter. So today and next week. And just like the last two with Marissa Nehlsen, if you missed those, you're definitely going to want to go back and listen. Loads of great stuff on how you can use speaking to build your business. Today we're going to be talking to Ryan Giffin. He worked for years at a Speakers Bureau and he's going to help us understand all things Speakers Bureau — from the mindset of someone who has worked on the inside, how it can help you build your business, whether it's right for you now or in the future, or whether it's not something you need to worry about at all. But before we get into that, if you haven't downloaded the companion guide for the show, go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge. And if you enjoy the show, we'd love it if you rate and review as well. All right, let's dive straight into the episode — we'll talk about it at the end.

Enjoy. Take plenty of notes. Hey Ryan, thanks for doing this. How are you?

Ryan Giffin:
Good, Roddy. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Roddy Galbraith:
It's so good to see you. I know you're a wealth of information. I really enjoyed talking to you at the International Maxwell Conference — what was that, a couple of weeks ago now? Gosh, time flies.

Ryan Giffin:
A couple of weeks ago. It seems like it was yesterday, and also months ago at the same time.

Roddy Galbraith:
You have so much information that I think will be fascinating for our listeners. But before we dig in — and I've got a ton of questions — just give us a bit of background. What's your story, your passion, what are you doing now?

Ryan Giffin:
I appreciate that. My name is Ryan Giffin. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas — so it was actually great to go back home for the conference. I went to college in Illinois, where I met my wife, Danica, and we lived there for a few years. From there, I had the opportunity to work for a Speakers Bureau in the Nashville, Tennessee area. One of my best friends since third grade was working for the agency. I had no idea what he was doing — when he said "Speakers Bureau," I thought he was getting into audiovisual equipment. He said, "Hey, I think you'd be a really great fit." I was working as an admissions counsellor at a college, which was fulfilling, but I'd just had a son and we needed to move forward. So the Lord kind of moved us to Nashville to work for an agency called Premier Speakers Bureau.

I remember getting their catalogue — you used to have to look through a printed catalogue to see what speakers were available. They sent it to me and I looked through it and I didn't recognise a single face. One of them was John Maxwell. Another was Condoleezza Rice. I was like, I don't even know that world. But through the grace of God, we had that opportunity.

I worked primarily in the K-12 education space — working with schools and teachers — and also in the university space and with nonprofits that served youth, like YMCAs and Boys & Girls Clubs, mainly on their fundraising events. But at its core, we were representing speakers for speaking engagements and working with a huge range of clients — from professional event planners to the secretary who was told to go find a speaker for the professional development day that year.

Roddy Galbraith:
What made your friend think you'd be great at this? He obviously saw something in you. What do you think it was?

Ryan Giffin:
I ask myself that same question. I think it really came down to having a knack for building relationships. Looking back, those were skills I didn't realise I had that would be valuable in this environment. In a very transactional, contract-driven world, a warm relationship is actually extremely useful. And this guy had known me since third grade — other than the Lord himself, he knew me better than anyone. That, and the fact that we weren't making much money and I needed to figure something out.

Roddy Galbraith:
How long were you at the bureau?

Ryan Giffin:
From 2008 to about 2021 — one of those post-COVID workplace changes. After about ten years, I had to have a real reckoning moment. I was feeling like I was just turning a wheel. So I decided to shift how I was doing things. I started to become more intentional about developing relationships with the speakers on our roster. I could see a disconnect — this perceived image of the bureau agent sitting in a corner office, smoking a cigar, very transactional. We were a Christian-based organisation and we were real people. So I said, hey, I'm going to start pouring into these speakers. Take the experience I'd built up over eight to ten years, and help develop some of these education speakers who had incredible stories and content — give them some attention and development at no cost to them through the normal bureau commission structure.

Roddy Galbraith:
Just so people can visualise what a bureau looks like — how many agents, how many speakers, what's happening day to day?

Ryan Giffin:
We had anywhere between six to about nine or ten agents at one time. Each of us had a particular sector — corporate, associations, faith-based nonprofits, schools, event planners. We each developed our own expertise in our market. And within that, some speakers would cross into multiple sectors, while others were a perfect fit for one. As an agent, you'd have your "horse" — that speaker you'd always pitch because they were consistent, clients loved them, and you had a real relationship with them.

Roddy Galbraith:
It's like an estate agent, isn't it? You represent the seller, but you're friendly with the buyers, because ultimately you need both. So who do you actually work for?

Ryan Giffin:
It is extremely complex. Traditionally, a bureau or large booking agency is primarily focused on the client — the company or organisation booking the event. I would be developing relationships with schools, education conferences, and associations. Those became my book of clients. A bureau takes its focus from the client, the organisation booking the events. Now, a speaker management group or management firm is different — they're going to be much more focused on the speaker as their client. That's the agent mentality — think sports agent. That's where you get that dynamic of representing the speaker's interests directly.

That distinction is important because when I started really investing in speakers — helping with branding, marketing, and content development — it started to look and feel different. That was the part of the job I loved most, and the part I wasn't technically getting paid for.

Roddy Galbraith:
The other agents weren't doing that?

Ryan Giffin:
Not as much. In fact, the running joke was that taking a call from a speaker was a production killer. As an agent in the booking world, you're on the phone constantly trying to connect clients with speakers. But I saw value in really pouring into the speakers I was working with — helping them package their content, think about their topics, see what would land with event planners.

Roddy Galbraith:
Emerging speakers or people thinking about working with bureaus — they want to know: how do I get onto your A-team?

Ryan Giffin:
One thing you absolutely do not want to do is call a bureau and say, "Hey, I'm thinking about starting to speak. I think I'd be good at it." Bureaus are not designed to create something out of nothing. What a bureau does really well is take momentum and multiply it. If you're getting traction — you've booked five events in the last couple of weeks, you've got six events coming up — a bureau can skyrocket that. They can tell a client, "This person just got booked three times this week." And the client thinks: that's the kind of person we want.

The number one way to get a bureau's attention is for a client to ask about you. If a customer comes to us and says, "Do you work with this speaker?" — that tells us immediately there's a market for you, that people want to book you. That's the first signal we need. The second is an introduction from a fellow speaker. A cold call from an unknown speaker is one thing, but if a speaker I trust says, "Ryan, if you don't get this person on your roster, you're crazy" — that carries enormous weight.

Roddy Galbraith:
So the bureau doesn't need you when you need them — but as soon as you've got traction, they want you?

Ryan Giffin:
Exactly. Once you're tried and tested and you can make them money reliably, everything changes. And there are things you can do to stand out. Invest in a professional speaker reel equal to your current speaking fee. If you're charging a thousand dollars per event, spend a thousand dollars on a professional film crew and a quality edit. If that video gets you one booking, you've had a 100% return on investment. If it gets you two, you've doubled your money. And the formula for a great reel is actually fairly consistent: third-person narration, preparation footage, arriving at the venue, the moment before you walk on stage, the audience reaction, a powerful content moment, a clear takeaway. Watch some of the best keynote speaker reels on YouTube — search "motivational keynote speaker reel" — and you'll see the formula.

Know your "aha moments" — those moments on stage when everyone reaches for their phone to photograph the slide or jot something down. Those are your selling points. Those are the clips you build your content around.

And here's something really important for your social media presence: speak as a speaker. If you share a story and say, "I was at an event of about a thousand people and they brought me in because of this one story..." — you've now given the viewer context to think of you as a speaker, not just someone with a great life hack. More times than not, someone watching your content at 2am is going to think, "I'm on a committee that books speakers — I need to send this to my chair."

Roddy Galbraith:
There's also the other side of this — the speakers who go around the bureau and contact the client directly?

Ryan Giffin:
That is one of the worst moves a speaker can make. We kept a very specific list of speakers who had done that. The whole relationship with a bureau is built on trust. For every time we found out it happened, we knew it was probably happening far more often. It destroys the relationship completely. I'm not the big bad bureau — I'm someone who genuinely loves making sure you can get on stage and making our clients happy. But if you go around me, there's no coming back from that.

Roddy Galbraith:
What about the realities of the speaking life — what should aspiring speakers know?

Ryan Giffin:
Speaking is one of the hardest ways to make an easy living — as one former NSA president put it. You have to be prepared for a 3am car rental in Akron to drive to St. Louis for an 8am speech. You'll have to make hard decisions — turning down $15,000 to be at your child's first day of school. You'll face rejection and you need thick skin. But here's the key: don't identify your success with each individual thing. Keep coming back to what made you want to do this in the first place. That bigger purpose is what's unbreakable when the small failures hit.

Roddy Galbraith:
We're going to have to leave it there for now because this is just too good to cram into one episode. We'll pick up the rest of the interview with Ryan next week and do a summary at the end. Before we close out this episode — you heard Ryan talking about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team. If you're interested in finding out what it means to be a member, simply go to MaxwellLeadership.com/Speak. Jump on a call with a programme advisor, ask them some questions, they'll ask you some questions, and you'll find out if it's a fit. Well over 60,000 coaches in over 168 countries. If you want to develop your speaking, there is no one better to model than John Maxwell. It may be the best phone call you've ever made.

Don't forget to download the companion resources at MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge. Remember, communication is one of the most important skills you can develop — in every area of life. So keep developing. Learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week for Part 2. Till then, take care. Lots of love. Bye-bye. God bless.