The joy of our company starts with the community. Nestled in beautiful Santa Barbara, BigSpeak Speakers Bureau is located in the wonderland between the Santa Ynez mountains to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the South, populated with restaurants, tasting rooms, and natural areas of beauty. Some call this place the American Riviera for its eternal springtime weather.
BigSpeak began in 1995 as part of founder Jonathan Wygant’s desire to reach people and make a difference in the world after running a Fortune 500 company. While he has taken a step back from day-to-day operations, his influence and generosity can be felt throughout the company he started out of his garage.
Recognition
Employees are recognized for their hard work and ideas. Each month, a deserving employee wins the Big Kahuna award: an award for providing service to the company above and beyond. Other awards given throughout the year recognize employee efforts for innovation and improving company culture.
Generosity
BigSpeak gives back generously to their employees. In addition to the great benefits (listed below), employees received a wonderful gift from the company each winter holiday season. But generosity isn’t just yearly, employees are taken out to dinners on months where results have exceeded expectations. Not to mention, leaders and employees alike are known to bring in hump-day breakfast burritos and the chocolate drawer is never left empty.
Leadership
Unlike other companies where you might never meet the boss except on the day you are hired, BigSpeak’s leadership is front and center. While this is true of many small companies, what makes leadership different is that they listen to their employees and create future plans for the company based on the feedback they receive. They ask for feedback in Leadership 360 surveys and address concerns in town halls held at off-sites.
Culture
BigSpeak believes in creating a collaborative and fun community for the employees to thrive in. As the company has grown, it has created a Culture Club dedicated to providing employees with time outside of work to bond through fun events like pumpkin carving, Thanksgiving feasts, and painted cabernets. During March Madness or the Super Bowl, the company sponsors a prize for fun, light-hearted competitions..
Innovation
BigSpeak considers itself a learning company. It’s not the same-old same-old, month after month. Your voice is heard. We are always improving and growing, looking for employee ideas to develop our systems, processes, business, and culture.
Big Benefits
In addition to a company of recognition, generosity, leadership, culture, innovation, BigSpeak offers the following benefits to improve your quality of life.
Retirement
401K ER – BigSpeak Contributes 4% match on salary YTD (discretionary)
401k ER Profit Sharing (discretionary)
401k Pension Plan Cash Balance $1,000-$2,000 a year
Health and Wellness
Health Insurance 100% premium cost paid by BigSpeak for employee
Paid Wellness Days – 12 a year
FSA/HSA
Long Term Disability
Personal Development
Employee Development Fund: $1,000 a year
Employee Wellness Fund: $500 a year
Time Off
Paid Vacation Days: 10 to start; increasing to 20 over 6 years
10 Paid Holidays
Majority of our team gets the week between Christmas and New Year’s off
Other Benefits
Volunteer days (2 per year)
Pet-friendly (we love dogs, cats, and fish)
We’ve all seen the Kid President videos by now. A cute kid in a Sunday suit (played by Robby Novak) who uplifts us all with his straight talk about life. In 2013, the Kid President videos took the internet by storm, leading to an internet series on Rainn Wilson’s Soulpancake featuring celebrity guests.
While we all remember Novak’s smiling face in front of the camera, bantering with celebs and talk show hosts, you probably don’t know the Kid President co-creator Brad Montague, who only came out for occasional cameos or prompted Novak off camera.
The creative mind behind the Kid President
While Novak is the star, Montague is the storytelling expert and inspirational keynote speaker who made it all possible. Before Kid President, he had been making films, videos, and entertainment for people ever since he was a kid. All he wanted to do was to create fun things and to help people. But it wasn’t until he decided to make a short video with Novak, almost on a whim, that his career took off and ending up meeting the likes of Obama, Beyonce, and Tom Hanks as part of the ongoing Kid President series.
If you haven’t seen him in person, Montague’s talks are funny, inspiring, and touching as he encourages others to do their small part to make the world a better place through joyful rebellion. Some takeaways from his talk include:
Live with wonder, wisdom, and whimsy
If you’re a kid, used to be a kid, or still a kid at heart, Montague says to live with wonder, wisdom, and whimsy. Approach things as if they were new and never lose that sense of wonder you had as a child.
Treat everybody like it’s their birthday
Montague’s life and work is all about connection. His advice to others is to treat everybody like it’s their birthday. That doesn’t mean buy them a present, but it does mean that every person is worth celebrating. And it stops you from punching them in the face when communication breaks down.
Choose to hug the haters
There will always be people who are unhappy or having a bad day. But Montague wants to remind us we have a choice in how we respond to hate. He says “haters gonna hate, but huggers gonna hug.” When Montague had negative comments in his Twitter feed, he and Novak responded with love and empathy, not hate. They didn’t change everyone’s world view, but they were able to connect with some haters on a deeper level—and turn them to huggers.
If you are interested in booking Montague for your next event, contact BigSpeak Speakers Bureau today.
Now that your brackets are locked in with the Louisville/Minnesota tip-off, it’s time we tell you who’s actually going to win NCAA’s March Madness this year. The 2019 bracket competition has been under severe scrutiny from people across the nation sitting on their couches in Zion Williamson jerseys because of recent developments in artificial intelligence.
Last season, Adobe Analytics AI applications drafted a March Madness bracket with 98% accuracy and Sportsline’s AI feature dabbled with 95% accuracy. This year both software companies are boasting that advances in AI are making their predictions unstoppable.
Adobe Analytics is working with 3.5 million rows of data from Sportradar this season as opposed to the 50,000 or so it used last year. Compiling statistics from 56,000 college basketball games, Adobe places Duke as the big winner for their sixth national title. The software uses over 100 key metrics including offensive and defensive rebounds, three-point shooting, player height, free-throw percentage and so much more.
Owner of the Golden State Warriors (and a handful of other professional sports teams) Peter Guber is a testament to following the numbers. His data-based leadership turned the Warriors into a championship team in three of the last four seasons. The 2017 book Betaball, written about Guber and co-owner Lacob’s innovative decision-making, explains the science behind ignoring fan-favorites and marketing gold-mines to create a team based solely on data.
With AI doing the heavy lifting for you, it’s not a bad idea to take a page out of Guber’s book and lean into the data.
After last year’s upset when a No. 16 seed UMBC beat out Virginia, a No. 1 seed, we all know sometimes there’s just no rhyme or reason to it. So can this technology really win you the pot?
Last season neither software foresaw UMBC’s victory, but with the advances there is a chance even the most surprising wins may not be a surprise. So, here’s Adobe’s possibly flawless bracket for all you cheaters.
Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.
Robyn Benincasa might be the most formidable person we know. Not only is she an adventure-racing world champion and 10-time Ironman racer, but she also serves her community as a San Diego firefighter. On top of that, she is a bestselling author of How Winning Works and considered a thought leader on teamwork and leadership.
After a life of racing, Robyn needed two hip replacements and was told by the doctors she would barely be able to walk, let alone race ever again. Since then, she set two Guinness World Records for various paddling events, started a non-profit, and continues to fight fires.
A true sign of an empowered woman is having the ability to uplift the women around her. Robyn made this her life’s work when she started Project Athena, a non-profit dedicated to helping women overcome setbacks through adventure challenges. CNN named her a CNN Hero for using her own resilience to support other women’s recoveries.
Molly Bloom
Molly Bloom is yet another audacious woman, as anyone who saw Molly’s Game would agree. Most of you have seen her journey from executive assistant. to running the largest and most elite underground poker game in the nation. The seats at her poker table were filled by A-list actors and professional athletes like Toby Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, and A-Rod. Molly didn’t just make her way into the boy’s club, she ran it.
She created the most desirable experience on the market for her essentially all-male clientele. And after it was broken up by the feds and everything seemed lost, she turned her life around with her book, movie, and speaking career.
Oh, and all of this came after she almost made the USA Olympic downhill ski team, before an injury took her out.
Barb Stegemann
Barb Stegemann is a socially good entrepreneur who uses her perfume company, The 7 Virtues, to help farmers in war-torn—or environmentally impacted—countries rebuild. She has taken a stand alongside the farmers she works with against the drug trade, extortion of labor, violations of human rights, and even the Taliban. When she saw an injustice, she took on the responsibility of righting it.
Not only is she changing the world with her company, but she also speaks out about the male-dominated health and beauty industry. She encourages women to pursue careers in the field because having men control an industry mostly made for women makes no sense.
Tan Le
Tan Le is one of the greatest minds in technology with one of the most inspiring stories. Tan’s mother raised her and her sister in Australia as refugees after escaping Vietnam on a boat in the middle of the night. Tan believes it was her outsider’s perspective that allowed her to see the world differently enough to create her brainwear technology company Emotiv. Emotiv is a non-intrusive headset that reads brain waves and allows the wearer to control technology with their thoughts alone. Her technology has been used to allow a paraplegic to drive a Formula 1 race car, give a form of communication to a young woman who lost all motor skills after a car accident, provide aid in autism research, and bring Harry Potter’s Hogwarts sorting hat to life.
She has won numerous awards, including being named Young Australian of the Year in 1998, voted one of Australia’s 30 Most Successful Women Under 30, chosen by Fast Company as one of the Most Influential Women in Technology in 2010, and picked by Forbes for 50 Names You Need to Know in 2011.
Bethenny Frankel
Bethenny Frankel has transformed her liquor line Skinnygirl into a complete lifestyle brand. When she started off with her alcoholic beverages, she realized she was breaking into a male-dominated industry where most liquors were marketed to men. Although her pitches for Skinnygirl were met with rejection after rejection, she knew the value of her product and pushed forward.
Now Skinnygirl has turned into a lifestyle brand that encompasses alcohol, food, beverages, clothing, and self-help books. She’s earned herself a seat with the Sharks on ABC’s Shark Tank where she makes serious investments with aspiring entrepreneurs and their startups.
Natalie Nixon
Natalie Nixon is where art meets corporate structure. Her background in jazz influences her unique and creative adaptations to organizational change and company growth.
Dr. Natalie Nixon is a strategy, foresight and innovation expert. As president and founder of Figure 8 Thinking, LLC., she advises leaders on unique approaches for process transformation and leveraging creativity as an innovation resource to more rapidly achieve priority business goals. Natalie does this by applying her background in cultural anthropology, fashion, and service design.
Kim Perell
Kim Perell is an award-winning entrepreneur, bestselling author, CEO and angel investor with a passion for people, technology, and progress. She went from being laid off at 23 to becoming a multi-millionaire by the time she was 30 years old and selling her last company for $235 million in 2014.
When her digital marketing company was acquired by Amobee in 2008 she worked her way back up to the top and become Amobee’s CEO by 2010. Kim is also an investor in over 70 companies, 14 of which have been successfully acquired by some of the largest Fortune 500 companies including a billion-dollar IPO.
Kim is passionate about women in business and writes, speaks, and is interviewed regularly on leadership, marketing technology, and entrepreneurship. Her achievements as a leader and entrepreneur have been widely recognized and covered in the media, including profiles in The New York Times, CNN Money, and Forbes. Her professional honors include being named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young and Entrepreneur of the Year by the National Association for Female Executives.
Carmen Simon
Dr. Carmen Simon brings neuroscience into the marketing and branding equation. After spending years studying how the brain works, Simon founded Memzy, a branding agency that uses the science of memory to create more effective campaigns.
Carmen has two doctorate degrees, one in instructional technology and another in cognitive psychology, and is a recognized expert in applying neuroscience to leadership, communication design, and customer engagement. Her most recent book, Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions, has been selected as one of the top books on persuasion.
Cynthia Johnson
Cynthia Johnson is a global entrepreneur, marketing professional, author and keynote speaker. She is Co-Founder at Bell +Ivy, a marketing and PR firm in Santa Monica, CA, and Las Vegas, NV. Previously, she was Partner & Director of Marketing for RankLab, a digital marketing agency listed in Inc. Magazine‘s Fastest Growing Private Companies in 2015. In July 2015, RankLab was acquired by American Addiction Centers.
She is an Advisory Board Member for The Millennium Alliance, a leading technology, business, and educational advisory firm serving Fortune 1000 C-Level executives. Basically, she’s the marketing guru who transforms companies with her branding expertise.
Cynthia was listed as one of top personal branding experts in 2017 by Entrepreneur, top 50 marketers on SnapChat by Mashable, top 12 Female Entrepreneurs that Inspire by Darling Magazine, and top 20 people in SEO by Guardian. She is a contributing columnist to Entrepreneur and has had work published in Forbes, TIME, and several other industry-specific and top-tier publications.
Lauren Templeton
Lauren Templeton is the founder and president of Templeton & Phillips Capital Management, LLC; a value investing boutique located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The company is the general partner to the Global Maximum Pessimism Fund.
She is the founder and former president of the Southeastern Hedge Fund Association, Inc. based in Atlanta, Georgia. Templeton currently serves the on the Board of Trustees at the Baylor School, Board of Advisors for The Beacon Center of Tennessee and the Atlas Board of Overseers. Templeton is also an active member of Rotary International. She serves on the investment committee of Chattanooga Rotary Club 103 and the investment committee of The Rotary Foundation.
In the past, Templeton has served as President of the Atlanta Hedge Fund Roundtable and as the Director of the Galtere Institute: Finance for the Future Initiative at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Additionally, Templeton has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Memorial Hospital Foundation, a member of the Finance Advisory Board of the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, and also served on the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. Templeton is also the co-author of, Investing the Templeton Way.
Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.
Have you heard of Perfect Fitness? You probably know their first best-selling product—the Perfect Pushup. Remember when we all used to do push-ups the old fashioned way, with our bare hands on the floor, before a push-up bar was developed to save our wrists from injury?
After the success of the Perfect Pushup, Perfect Fitness was at a crossroads. Despite having a successful product they were under siege. Lower-priced, copycat products were entering the market daily. The fitness segment they dominated was now in danger of being won over by cheaper brands.
Fortunately, Walmart wanted to feature the Perfect Pushup in all their stores. There was one catch. Walmart wanted a cheaper version of the Perfect Pushup and to be delivered in 90 days or they would promote a cheaper competitor’s product instead.
The founder of Perfect Fitness, Alden Mills, recounts in his new book Unstoppable Teams, he didn’t think long on that proposal. Saying no would mean losing a large market of buyers but saying yes presented him with a large and daunting challenge. He said yes and in a massive undertaking, he developed a prototype, manufactured it, and delivered it to Walmart stores—in under 90 days!
He was able to do this because he had learned the principles of leading high-performance teams, which he outlines in his new book.
Platform
Leading great teams all starts with the leader having control of his or her own platform. Mills says you cannot lead a great team unless you can first lead yourself. To lead yourself, you must focus on the only things within your control: your mental, emotional, and physical capabilities. You will also need great people.
Recruitment
Where do great teams come from? They come from hiring people with the complementary skills and strengths you need for your company. You not only need to know yourself well but also your company’s needs to employ these skills. This is why it’s important to connect with your teams.
Connect
In order to get your team to follow you, you must know the people that make them. You need to connect with them mentally and emotionally. This is done by building your credibility as a leader and showing it through consistent and committed behavior. If you do this, team members will trust you and be willing to follow you to achieve great results.
Achieve
To achieve results, you need to inspire people, assure them, and assess them. You must give people lofty goals to aspire to, evaluate their efforts as a team, and show your appreciation for what they do. When people have something to work for, feel fairly evaluated and appreciated, they will do more for you. But you can’t forget respect.
Respect
Mills says as a team leader, you reap what you sow. If you show respect to your team members, you’ll get respect from them. You’ll earn their respect by recognizing each person’s contribution to the team. The more you respect your teammates, the more they will be engaged. Another way to show your respect is to empower your team.
Empower
To achieve great things, you must empower your teammates. Ideas don’t come from the leader alone. They come from each member of the team. When you empower teammates to find solutions, you will get the best ideas.
If you want to learn more about how to lead teams, check out Mill’s book or contact BigSpeak to hire him for your next event.
If you’re a Harry Potter fan, get ready for your year to be made. If you’re not a Potter fan…you really should be. MIT Student Nataliya Kosmyna has created a real-life “Sorting Hat” from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter book series capable of reading your mind and judging your character enough to place you in your respective house.
The hat is based on technology developed by BigSpeak Exclusive Speaker Tan Le, who created a non-intrusive headset that reads brain waves. The technology was originally created and used by Le in 2011 for use in nonverbal control of tech, like moving an object on a computer screen by thinking about where you wanted it to go. Since then, the brainwear technology has been utilized by outside companies and research groups to do incredible things like allowing a paraplegic man to drive a Formula 1 race car, giving a form of communication to a young woman who is paraplegic and completely non-verbal, and making leaps in autism research.
Now, an MIT student has used Le’s technology to bring everyone’s favorite magical series to life. Kosmyna programed Le’s brainwear technology based off the bonus material Rowling put together on her digital Harry Potter news platform and entertainment site, Pottermore.com.
The brainwear Sorting Hat is able to read the brain waves of the person wearing it and determine the person’s house. During a series of questions, the device reads the brain’s reactions, judging for qualities, such as bravery, wisdom, power, and loyalty. It assesses the wearer’s personality traits and which house they align with to make the perfect Hogwarts house placement.
Kosmyna says she was placed in Gryffindor (Harry Potter’s house in the books), but she has a biased advantage since she knows how the sorting software works. She is still working on the final product of her Sorting Hat, but says soon it will be available to children (and adult-closeted Potterheads) everywhere.
Jessica Welch is the Content Marketing Associate at BigSpeak Speakers Bureau, holding a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature and Anthropology from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her business thought articles often appear on Business 2 Community, Born 2 Invest, and YF Entrepreneurs.
