The eerie, the alarming and the down-right terrifying industry stories on Halloween đŸ˜± [insert shrieking]

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Happy Halloween! đŸ‘» You know we absolutely love what we do
but that doesn’t mean we never have any frightful moments that stop us dead in our tracks! You can read about some of those from our co-founders below. Come for the stories, stay for the childhood costume photos. Grab some popcorn and buckle up!

TORI MARRA, CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

Nothing is quite as horrifying for an ops person in the speaking industry as a speaker travel mishap! You have the event host, the speaker, the agent, and the audience (whether they know it or not) all holding their breath for the magic solution in—what feels like—negative time. I’ll set the scene. Speaker based in California booked to host a panel and deliver a session in Switzerland. Ops team checks in with limited responses on final logistics. On the travel day, ops team finds out the speaker got the dates mixed up and isn’t at the airport for their flight. Heart drops. Panic starts. Chaos ensues! We feed the client a little hocus pocus while we manage to get the speaker on a new flight later that day, traveling across 9 time zones to a different airport, onto a train where they’re doing wardrobe, hair and makeup, and walking into the venue and immediately onstage without modifying their start time. Nightmare averted, but not without a lot of tricks up our sleeves. Lesson learned here? Always send your itineraries out early, plenty of calendar reminders, AND never let a speaker ghost you for too long đŸ‘».

TARA BERTHIER, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER

One spooky Halloween night in New York, Tori and I scraped together some costumes (Thelma and Louise, of course), and headed out to our favorite pub close to the office where we were currently working.

En route, we ran into one of our speakers—none other than Bert Jacobs (Founder of Life is Good) dressed as a tennis player. He invited us into his Uber and we all headed down to a party at The Bowery Hotel where Bert proceeded to have the entire dance floor sing “We All Live in a Yellow Submarine”.

Our hangovers the following morning were indeed scary. But what was especially chilling was when Tori and I were driving in Boston a month later, and spotted Bert (dressed as Bert) on the sidewalk next to a highway on-ramp. We slowed down enough to get a high-five.

What are the odds of THAT? What does it all mean
? *Cue ominous music*.

CAITIE BRADLEY SHEA, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

You know what’s scary? Being a Co-Founder of a speakers bureau in March of 2020 and watching your entire year of events disappear in a 48 hour period. THAT was f$%king scary. AMIRITE??

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We couldn’t agree more, Caitie. From all of us at Outspoken to you, have a great Halloween! And for the record, we prefer treats over tricks, any day of the week.

Outspoken Agency is a women-owned speaking agency representing leaders, founders, public intellectuals, authors and entertainers for paid keynotes, workshops and panels at in-person and virtual events. Learn more about our female founders here.