The team behind one of the world’s top speaker bureaus, Speakers Associates, created Universal Speaker Group as a resource for professional keynote speakers.
Using our industry experience and expertise, we wanted to create a place where we could share insights and knowledge to help speakers grow their business and get more clients.
How it started
In 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 global lockdowns, many of our speakers saw their speaking businesses grind to a halt. Sadly, this was not a new phenomenon; as speaker agents, we had already witnessed a similar impact during the SARS outbreak of 2002-04 and after the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, which resulted in the cancellation of speaking engagements around the world.
However, we also noticed that some speakers not only survived those turbulent times but actually thrived and grew their businesses. The difference was that they had diversified their income streams beyond keynote speaking and had built Authority brands in their own space.
Our mission: Helping speakers build Authority
This is the ideal that most speakers strive for; strong personal brands that generate a steady stream of enquiries and bookings and which facilitate the creation of other products and services from books and workshops to online courses and apps.
But, when it comes to building an Authority brand, most speakers don’t know where to begin.
Our goal is to help speakers build the kind of personal brands that open doors and get bookings. Brands with authority and influence.
We aim to achieve this by building the #1 marketing resource for professional keynote speakers. A resource that will help you grow, optimise and diversify your speaking business.
Universal Speaker Group: the industry standard for speaker bios
Our first objective was to solve a long-standing, yet simple problem: the quality of speaker bios. Bios are usually out-of-date, inconsistent across speaker bureau websites and are not compelling or convincing. They fail to play the crucial role that they should in helping the speaker get more bookings.
Today, USG provides a central place where any speaker can create and store their definitive speaker bio for free: always up-to-date, accurate and containing everything that a client or bureau needs to know about that speaker in one simple page.
We also offer speaker bureaus a unique and convenient way to source reliable and comprehensive speaker bios. Bureaus can access the latest and most up-to-date speaker bios for free. This greatly reduces the tedious process of manually updating speaker profiles.
Bureaus can also automatically receive an update every time one of the speakers they follow updates their biographies. This ensures that their listings are always accurate and up-to-date, giving both the speakers and the bureau confidence in promoting the speaker’s services.
What’s next?
We are working hard to expand our services to provide a truly comprehensive marketing and promotion platform for all professional speakers.
For example, we will soon be launching The Speaker Handbook, a global, searchable directory of professional speakers available for event planners, corporations and speaker bureaus to use free of charge.
Note: Universal Speaker Group is not a speaker bureau. We do not handle enquiries on behalf of speakers or get involved in bookings. For a list of some of the world’s best speaker bureaus, see our Bureau Partner page.
At the same time, we will be introducing a Pro membership subscription for speakers who wish to be listed in The Speaker Handbook.
Available from as little as $16.66 a month, our Pro membership offers speakers superb value for money. In addition, to a listing in The Speaker Handbook, Pro members will also have a personal contact form automatically added to their USG bios allowing prospective clients to get in touch directly, quickly and easily.
Finally for 2023, we will be launching our professional biography writing service which will come with a guarantee that participating speakers will get listed on one or more speaker bureau websites.
Where to find us
We are based in the United Kingdom with a remote team working in 3 different timezones.
You can contact us via this website or by using the details here.