We recently connected with Arel Moodie and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Arel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
There are tons of events that book speakers that happen every day. There are tons of speakers. But how speakers get connected to opportunities is really a black box.
We wanted to help solve that problem. I experienced that personally as a professional speaker for the last 19 years and as someone who has booked speakers I knew intimately how hard it all was.
Speakers are typically high on the artist scale and low on the business acumen. Meaning they know their message, how to speak, but understanding business is really hard or just uninteresting.
Every speaker wants deals to just come to them.
This is all the background to the story.
As a professional speaker, I often get asked by those interested in speaking how to do it.
I was part of an entrepreneurship group and was leading some classes on speaking.
One fellow member had recently sold her company and was looking into speaking to tell her story.
She reached out to me, and I started by helping her clarify her message, what she wanted to say, and what her talk would be.
Then we started getting into the phase where she would get booked to delivered the talk we created.
I started explaining to her the steps to start building a name, getting the word out, capturing leads, closing leads…
As I explained all the steps she kept asking an important question “And why is it done that way?”
And I kept giving the same (and admittedly worst answer) “Because that’s the ways it’s always been”
Because she was coming from an outside perspective, she felt this was a huge opportunity to improve this process for both the speakers and event planners.
She kept saying, “there are some interesting ways to leverage technology to improve this process.”
I said “yea, but it doesn’t exist”
And then she said this “well, if it doesn’t exist, maybe someone should create it. Maybe we should”
And that was the moment Talkadot was born.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
There are tons of events that book speakers that happen every day. There are tons of speakers. But how speakers get connected to opportunities is really a black box.
We wanted to help solve that problem. I experienced that personally as a professional speaker for the last 19 years and as someone who has booked speakers I knew intimately how hard it all was.
Speakers are typically high on the artist scale and low on the business acumen. Meaning they know their message, how to speak, but understanding business is really hard or just uninteresting.
Every speaker wants deals to just come to them.
This is all the background to the story.
As a professional speaker, I often get asked by those interested in speaking how to do it.
I was part of an entrepreneurship group and was leading some classes on speaking.
One fellow member had recently sold her company and was looking into speaking to tell her story.
She reached out to me, and I started by helping her clarify her message, what she wanted to say, and what her talk would be.
Then we started getting into the phase where she would get booked to delivered the talk we created.
I started explaining to her the steps to start building a name, getting the word out, capturing leads, closing leads…
As I explained all the steps she kept asking an important question “And why is it done that way?”
And I kept giving the same (and admittedly worst answer) “Because that’s the ways it’s always been”
Because she was coming from an outside perspective, she felt this was a huge opportunity to improve this process for both the speakers and event planners.
She kept saying, “there are some interesting ways to leverage technology to improve this process.”
I said “yea, but it doesn’t exist”
And then she said this “well, if it doesn’t exist, maybe someone should create it. Maybe we should”
And that was the moment Talkadot was born.
When I was in college, I got introduced to the world of entrepreneurship when I took a trip to South Korea to visit my then girlfriend (now wife).
In Korea, there was nothing in English to keep me entertained but my girlfriend has picked up a book called “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”
I never read a book on personal development before, but this one called to me from the first page.
In the book, the author talked about learning from successful people.
I decided to find my own “Rich Dad” by interviewing successful business owners in my college town. I started with the pizza shop owner who introduced me to the comic book store owner who introduced me to an entrepreneurship professor who was starting a club for business minded students.
I jumped at the chance to help the professor and decided to take his entrepreneurship class and help start the club.
One piece advice my professor gave me was to go to as many events as possible and learn from speakers and network.
I went to a bunch events and they were all so boring.
But then one event had an amazing speaker and I just knew I wanted to do that. Seeing the speaker I immediately just knew with full certainty that this is what I wanted to do. It was like unlike any other feeling I felt.
I then entered a talent show and delivered a motivational speech and won. And was hooked.
While in the entrepreneurship class, I started my first business and ran that while I was a student and for a few years after I graduated.
But motivational speaking was my passion and what I really wanted to do. And I started by speaking to students on how to take advantage their opportunities.
I moved to different topics and groups such as government , non profit, High school, junior high school, then business and Associations.
I’ve spoken in 48 states, 5 countries, to almost 1,000,000 people. I’ve written a best selling book. Been invited to speak at the White House twice, TEDx stage 3 times. I’ve been named a Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 entrepreneur. I’ve been asked to host a show that was on Disney+ called Family Reboot.
Being knee deep in speaking and different markets, I learned so much about the industry and when I met my now cofounder, I wanted to elevate the industry as a whole.
I really see professional speaking as an art. A sacred craft that has the ability to impact the lives of an audience and change them in about one hour.
Solving problems really is about helping the right speakers get connected to the right events so the audience’s lives can be positively changed.
The right speaker at the right event changes lives within the audience. It helps the speaker find meaning and purpose in service and helps the event organizer attracr more attendees for future events. A good speaker changes is the most important part for many events.
The ability to create a platform that helps more accurately connect speakers and event planners has a massive impact.
Getting there was a bit tricky.
What we decided to do was create a feedback tool that allows speakers to measure their impact, collect testimonials, and leads from their audiences. Helping them build their business and prove their work.
We now allow event planners to tell us what they are looking for in a speaker and we can match their needs against our database of over 12,000 speakers and match them with speakers more accurately than any other means on the market now.
This way we can make sure the right speaker, regardless of what they look like or how good they are at marketing be connected to the right event
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Learning about “viral loops” was a game changing discovery.
If you look at how some companies grow, figuring out how to create your product in a way that when your users use your product they are also promoting your company.
For example, when some leaves a restaurant review on Yelp, it helps the individual restaurant build their brand but it also builds the brand of Yelp.
With Talkadot we have professional speakers use our tool to collect audience and client feedback. Most people who collect feedback don’t do anything with it. We made it very easy for speakers to share the data and testimonials by turning them into images very easily on our platform.
They can share their feedback easily on social media and on their websites.
This promotes how effective that individual speaker is and it helps build brand awareness that Talkadot is the feedback tool for the speaker/event industry.
By finding ways to have your users, by simply using your tool, become brand ambassadors has helped us grow and is a great way for all founders to grow their company.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I have been a professional speaker for some time. When you are a speaker, often people ask you about public speaking tips or ways to break into the professional speaking arena.
During COVID, one of the entrepreneurship groups I was part of decided to create affinity groups to help keep members connected even though we had to be physically a part. I was asked to chair the affinity group for Speakers.
As I ran these meetings, one of the members Pokin Yeung who was selling her company was looking to improve her speaking and get into the speaking circuit.
We met and I started helping her with her content and messaging. After we worked on that it was time to help her land speaking speaking engagements.
She asked me how that process worked and I began to explain to her how the industry works, explaining a lot of it is based on who you know, relationships and how the industry works.
Because she is an extremely curious person she kept asking “Why is it done that way?” “and why is that done that way?” and I kept giving the same answer “Well, that’s because that’s the way it has always been.”
She then thought, well if we combine your industry knowledge and bring an outside perspective we could use technology to help uplevel the entire industry so great speakers who may not be as well know could be matched to speaking engagements they are great fits for, and for event planners who need to find speakers can more easily and more accurately doing so.
Since no one was tackling this, we thought “What if we were the ones to do it?” and that began the birth of Talkadot
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.talkadot.com
- Instagram: @talkadot
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arelmoodie/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkadot
