We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Angelica Malin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Angelica, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I moved to New York in June 2022 (by accident, having met my husband on holiday). This required me to build my emcee career in America up from scratch, having founded and run one of the UK’s most-read lifestyle magazines and been a regular on the British conference scene as a professional emcee-moderator-host for years. I also became a first-time mom in this time, so I was building my speaking business with a newborn in a new country! No pressure, right.

The interesting thing I’ve learnt is how transferrable skill sets are between countries. Whilst I didn’t have any clients when I first moved to America, a skill set is universal and can be used in any market if you’re really clear on what value you bring. It’s not just what you ‘do’, but the ‘transformation’ your business delivers. The transformation my business offers to taking an event and making it an experience – I work with the audience to create a warm, inclusive space, using humor, being personable and engaging. I use social media to share this transformation journey and to share a lot of testimonials – because what other people say about you is so important!

Emceeing is a challenging space to be in, as traditional event planners make overlook an emcee and focus more on the keynote speakers, but a good host can make or break an event! I have moderated over 100 panels as a professional moderator and it’s a skill set I’ve develop over hours and hours of conversations. I draw on my journalism background to ask insightful questions and have impactful conversations – there’s really an art to this – and choosing the best moderator for a panel is so crucial to get the most out of the speaking talent. The last thing you want is your audience bored during a panel or reaching to scroll on their phones.

In terms of scaling up, I got intentional about the kind of events I wanted to be involved in and using LinkedIn to build my network. I love anything in the entrepreneurship, tech and business space, so it made sense to niche down to business-focused events to emcee. I started emceeing by running my own women’s entrepreneurship festivals back in London called She Started It LIVE!

I also decided to be vulnerable and ask for help – one of my first clients in America was an event planner I emailed, who I told quite honestly that I was coming back off maternity leave and looking for opportunities in New York. He instantly picked up the phone and booked me. I thought that having taking time off to care for my baby would disadvantage me, but people were so kind and inclusive about it. We’re moving to a more compassionate workplace that allows space for our personal lives and I love that.

Scaling up is really about trusting yourself. Trusting that if you know your message, you know your value and you know what you bring to the table, and you have content that reflects that value, that the right clients will find you and want to work with you – that process may take time, but you have to trust that the ‘flow’ will come to you if you keep plugging away.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Angelica Malin – I’m a Global Emcee, Moderator and Keynote Speaker. I founded and ran one of the most-read lifestyle magazines in the UK, and ran my own women’s entrepreneurship festivals called She Started It LIVE! Through the experience of hosting those festivals over several years, I started to have brands and companies reach out to me asking if I could host their events. I didn’t even know that emceeing was a real career, but I knew that I loved the feeling of being on stage, working with audiences and being the key player at a big event to keep the audience engage, the day flowing and being coming away feeling energised and inspired. Before I knew it, I was hosting conferences and events all over Europe, and doing lots of virtual events during the pandemic. I moved to New York in June 2022, and essentially had to build my business from the ground up over here – it’s been a journey, but also a great lesson in how to build organically and create healthy growth in our businesses. I’ve been growing a client base in America and have proudly emceed events for the United Nations, Unilever, WeWork, EMRG Media, DigiMarcon and more in the US. As an emcee, my style is warm, engaging and personable – I give events an intimate feel, even with a 500+ audience. I’ve also written three bestselling books and deliver keynote talks about how to have better, more impactful conversations, drawing on my moderating and journalism background!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Video content, video content, video content! Especially in the speaking industry, people don’t want to hear about what you do, they want to SEE it in action! That’s why video content is so crucial – you really want to give people the experience of being in the room with you. I also make sure to get video testimonials from my clients where I can so I can share those live testimonials of working with me – they are so impactful! If you’re looking to build your social media presence, I’d really focus on Reels for Instagram, and educational content for LinkedIn. Those would be the main channels I’d pick, and Tiktok is you have a product-based business. It’s all about finding something that will ‘stop the scroll’ so you need a really good hook for your video content and use some trending audio. With LinkedIn, I’d really use the tools they have available like LinkedIn Live and audio content. And again, focus on the transformation of working with you! Social media gets overcomplicated, I think if we focus on the ‘social’ element of it – i.e interacting with people, building a community, answering questions – our content does better and is more impactful.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Testimonials! I really think that your business is about what other people say about you. I work so hard for my clients – I always arrive early, I’m happy to jump on calls, answer questions, and go the extra mile – and I work so hard to get those testimonials that prove I’m the emcee you want for your event! I’ve now got over 70+ positive testimonials on LinkedIn and I often get event planners getting in touch now saying they were recommended by someone else. You know word of mouth is one thing that will never go out of fashion! I think also we can focus too much on getting new clients and overlook nuturing our current ones – I’m really proud of how many regular and repeat clients I have in my speaking business – I have a few conferences I do every year and am repeatedly booked as their emcee – and I think that’s a testament to doing a good job, which matters more to me than getting new clients every day!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://angelicamalin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jellymalin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelicamalin/
• Twitter: https://x.com/jellymalin
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jelly_malin