Course Instructor - Maria Franzoni

I work with speakers, speaker agents, and bureau teams to help them to grow their speaking businesses - in other words, get more bookings, charge higher fees and create profitable businesses. Here's why I'm qualified to do so:

I am an experienced speaker booker. I have held senior positions with 2 of Europe’s leading bureaus; CSA Celebrity Speakers and the London Speaker Bureau – named by the New York Times as “the only international speaker bureau”. In 2007 I founded my own multi-million-pound international bureau imaginatively named Maria Franzoni Ltd. (MFL)

In the 20 plus years that I have been working in the industry I’ve strived to raise standards of bureaus, agents and speakers alike constantly innovating and doing things differently. In that time, I’ve mentored and trained many top speakers and bookers. Over the years I have worked with the good and the great of the speaking world, including first man on the moon Neil Armstrong; Body shop founder and environmentalist Anita Roddick; singer-songwriter and political activist Bob Geldof; business magnate Richard Branson; international singing legend Liza Minnelli; former trader and author of Black Swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb and F1 and NASCAR racing champion Jacques Villeneuve …. To name (drop) a few.

I am a founding member and former co-chair of the European Association of Speaker Bureaus. I am Director of Operations at We Do Things Differently cultural change consultancy. Founder and chief mentor at Speaking Business Academy where my team and I provide training for experts, speakers and speaker bureau agents. I also host the Speaking Business podcast where each week I bring in a trusted expert to share tactics and strategies to help you get more bookings.  https://speakingbusiness.libsyn.com/

Prior to working with speakers, I worked in retail management, management consultancy, educational travel, and as an entrepreneur starting five businesses. My experience in other industries has given me an excellent foundation and hands-on understanding of how to run and grow profitable businesses.

Course Instructor - Mary Tillson-Wharton

I am Head of Speaker Coaching and Momentum at Speaking Business Academy, helping speakers develop their content and messaging, and maximise their personal impact and delivery style to ensure that they are at all times relevant, memorable and make it easy for their audience to be able to listen to and understand them.  Three essentials to getting booked to speak again and again.  I co-facilitate workshops and 1:1 Sessions with Maria and am lead tutor on content specific workshops.

Additionally, I support speakers in delivering more than “just a speech” and build on the momentum achieved from their speeches. Many clients are now looking for a return on their investment from a speaker and want the learning from the speech embedded back within their business in some way to bring about the behavioural change they seek.

As a highly experienced Management and Leadership Development Principal Consultant with over 20 years demonstrated history of designing, developing, project leading, for both face to face and virtual delivery, a range of Management and Leadership programmes for global Blue-Chip companies that achieve ROI, I am well placed to help speakers.

I work closely with speakers helping them develop their material into interactive workshops or fully blended learning programmes.  I also coach on how to facilitate in person and virtual workshops. Feedback is the key to improving, and I provide timely and focused gifts of feedback and additional coaching, as necessary. I am passionate about setting my clients up for success and I make sure my coaching is practical as well as fun.