We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Caitie Bradley Shea a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Caitie, thanks for joining 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.

To be 100% candid, the decision to launch Outspoken was made during a night of copious wine consumption and three friends (who were also colleagues) sitting by a fire, bitching about work. The IDEA to launch Outspoken had been brewing for some time and was born out of frustrations in our industry, and the realization that we had three women, with VERY distinctive and diverse expertise who happen to make up the perfect TRIFECTA of talent needed to launch our specific business. THAT was the driving logic behind the inevitable question every entrepreneur asks themselves… “Can we pull this off”? The answer was obviously YES, but it was only a yes because of the dynamic between us three co-founders.

The other component, while entirely cliche, was that we had an immense amount of passion about solving a problem within an archaic industry that reflected dusty values. We wanted to see DIVERSITY on conference stages and we wanted to help bridge that gap.

Launching Outspoken was undoubtedly daunting and complicated, but in many ways was an inevitability. At that stage of each of our careers coinciding with that moment of inflection in our industry and the world at large, it was kind of the only logical option!

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

Outspoken is an all female founded and speaker’s agency. Our mission is to amplify the diverse voices and messages that have been historically underrepresented on event stages across the globe. We do this by working with people whose life work is dedicated to progress in whatever form. Whether they’re an activist, an educator, entrepreneur or inventor, they’re on the stage to deliver a message that will hopefully help make the world a better place one speech at a time.

When we launched Outspoken we saw a need for a fresh perspective within an industry that has been notoriously “stuck in the dark ages”. As three millennial women launching a brand that was focused on equity, diversity and representation, we offered a unique capability to event hosts that was not as readily available at that time – An edgier take on speakers and an abundance of options when it came to all topics related to DEI. The landscape has changed (for the better!) in the last six years as more agencies are focused on diversity, which we LOVE. More is more as far as we’re concerned because while progress has been made, there is an INFINITE amount of room for growth.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

We got sued before we made our first sale! The story is irrelevant and frankly isn’t supposed to be discussed (LOL) but the lessons learned were lifelong and created a foundation between us co-founders that prepared us for literally ANY future challenge we would face together, including a business CRUSHING pandemic. Straight out of the gates we saw (and supported) each other through our most vulnerable and terrified moments. When one of us was at our breaking point, the other two talked them off the ledge. It was from that specific experience that we knew we had what it took to withstand whatever came our way, as long as we were doing it as the TRIAD.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Yup! March of 2020. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant and in a matter of 48 hours we saw our entire year of business (we make money off of live events!) literally go POOF into the atmosphere. GONE. NOTHING.

It’s a story that pretty much every entrepreneur on this planet can resonate with on some level because everyone was impacted. Literally every breathing human being. And THAT was exactly what helped us take a deep breath and realize we had to have faith that the answers were going to present themselves. Because they had to.

And of course they did. Thanks indeed to the very much needed PPP funding, but more IMPORTANTLY to the ingenuity of my two business partners who kept the ship afloat and pivoted to virtual (pretty much immediately), and kept us in the game while I had a baby. It is a period of this business’s lifespan that I will be forever grateful to by partners for and will always remind me of why we did this thing together in the first place.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.outspokenagency.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outspokenagency/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/outspokenagency/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/outspoken-agency
• Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/outspokenagency
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC5k76NeVJNfy-H5yfYPU_w?app=desktop

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