The professional speakers' business

Yes, yes, we might have a deal before the May holiday and even if that does not work out, the lift-off of our Speakers' Bureau is near. A speakers' bureau organizes professional speakers against a percentage of their speakers' fee. That is a pretty simple business model, and so we thought it was necessary to link up with an solid international network that cannot be copied that easy.
Many people have already called me (or got in touch through digitally more advanced methods) and asked me how they can get into this business as a speaker. Since I will be in charge of the speakers' side of the new company I'm happy to explain the procedure a bit. In principle we are looking for professional speakers, so we follow the principle "Don't call us, we call you". If we have not noticed you speaking, there is something wrong.
That could be us. In Shanghai, our network is pretty ok, but we might still miss good speakers in Beijing and other parts of China. If you think we have missed you wrongly (or if you want to speak up for somebody else), do invite us for your speeches. Drop me an email, and I or one of my colleagues will come, since we love to see good speakers in action. We have to recommend speakers to our future clients, so when we have seen you, that works better. In the end, you do not have to convince us, but we have to convince our clients. Also, when you have more questions, let me know.
Becoming a member of the Professional Speakers Association (PSA) is an excellent idea and we will be teaming up with the China chapter of the PSA soon. They are now in an accreditation procedure for the international organization, so we a both in the same boat.
Being a professional speaker is not enough though, you also need the background and expertise that might be wanted by our future customers. In short: it helps if you have something to say and are an authority in that field. We cannot be all Alan Greenspan, but people do have to be desperate in need of your presence. Very soon, we will publish the list of people we have been signing up already.
This in short, more will follow very soon.

Books on China not to buy

Are you looking for something to read in the upcoming May holidays? Access Asia breaks with a tradition in reviewing books and lists in this week's newsletter three that are actually so bad, you should not buy them. So in AA's great tradition of not being afraid to piss people off, you should not buy:
By Will Hutton: The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy.

The Windbag of the Third Way displays a profound and deep lack of knowledge of (or even passing acquaintance with) China, but still manages to stuff his bank account with royalties anyway.

By Sid Smith:China Dreams.

We can only assume that Sid Smith is a fake name for a teenager somewhere in Wimbledon who’s turning in these manuscripts to his uncle’s publishing company. Nothing to do with China, or anything much else for that matter, except some lunatic dreams that make no sense whatsoever – the only good news is that it’s less than 200 pages long.

By Guy Delisle: Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China.

Another in the “oh I’m a foreigner and China’s really weird” school of books. For 150 pages! As bad as a language student’s blog (and they are all really bad) covering strange food, funny accents, they’re not really like us at all, and on and on and on.

More at the Access Asia Website.
The reviews all bear the hallmarks of our celebrity speaker Paul French, who is working through our Speakers Bureau. Are you interested to hear his critical view directly, do not hesitate to drop me a line.

Ethical dilemma's in signing up speakers

Rupert Hoogewerf

Today we are signing up a few new speakers for our upcoming speakers bureau. Yes, we can now include Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder of the China Rich List, on our list.

We already knew that we could not include any politicians that are still in office, and since Chinese politicians very seldom leave office, that pool will be rather small for the time being. But for our first "big name" assignment we had also listed some really famous business people (no, I cannot give names here), but they also seem to have a problem in earning money as a professional speaker. They cannot do that for ethical reasons.

While I see the logic here, I had never any misgivings as a journalist to take money for my speeches (although in those days I did sell my soul for fairly little money). University professors, TV-anchors, lawyers and other consultants do not have a problem to sign up. Maybe because in those occupations doing speaking assignments is anyway considered to be part of the business.

The only way out is perhaps that of Bill Clinton: he makes an average of US$200,000 per speech, but passes 80 percent on to his own charity foundation. The other 20 percent goes of course to his speaking bureau, we have to make a living too.

The ultimate China expert

Dan Harris at the China Law Blog has a look at 'the' China expert. Of course this person does not exist apart from in the mind of people who think that China is a very simple country. You would also not ask for a Europe-expert.
It made me recall a nice one-line by one of our China consultant Paul French yesterday. Paul focuses on market entry of food products and admitted yesterday: "Most of the products we help to enter the Chinese market fail. We of course blame the products for that."

Cheese that tastes like chocolate

Paul French gave today a closing speech at the opening of a food additive company of DSM in Shanghai and did a great job. After a day with the usual overload, Paul added a lighter note with a whole row of anecdotes. The enthusiastic audience will certainly remember some of the business battle stories Paul told.
I found his story about the cheese best. While a part of the Chinese have started to drink coffee, cheese has not yet conquered a place in the Chinese menu. So, he was working with a European cheese market who came up with this brilliant idea of making cheese that tastes like chocolate.
"Why you do not make chocolate, if you want to sell something that tastes like chocolate," Paul suggested. But he could not convince his client. We all thought this product is not going to make it.
When DSM asked us for a food expert to speak at the opening of their plant, we thought it would be a pretty tough assignment for our speakers' bureau, but it went down pretty ok. Mostly somebody of our sales department joins at the speeches, but this is a great way to see how things work out in real life.

Wanted: A young Chinese entrepreneur with presentation skills

And of course fluent in English. We are looking for this combination of talents to speak about innovation.
Do you know somebody who matches those criteria? Please let me know. Do you think you are one yourself? Well, that is of course very suspicious, but do drop me a line. We have already some candidates, but are looking to enlarge our pool of talented speakers.

The booming speakers' business

Really, the official launch of our China Speakers' Bureau is not far off now. One of the reasons things go pretty slow, is because we are already pretty busy in placing speakers. This morning professor Zhang Jun of Fudan spoke for a group of Brazilian EMBA-students from Insead and tomorrow afternoon Paul French of Access Asia speaks at the opening of a chemical factory.
This morning I got a briefing on a corporate conference taking place in June for the 100+ top managers of a company in China, and they were looking for two speakers, one famous one for the opening of the conference.
The pattern is more or less similar: what they - mostly - want is a Chinese speaker, fluent in English with an international outlook. What a pity for all my non-Chinese friends.

Mark Schaub

"Headquarters should be more involved in their China-operation"

Lawyer and author Mark Schaub spoke this evening in Shanghai at the Garden Bookstore at Changle Lu during the presentation of his recently published book, China - the Art of law. His message of this evening: headquarters should not abandon their China operation after they signed a contract.
Schaub: "Ninety percent of the effort and financial resources is spend to set up the operation. They hire PWC, McKinsey and a law firm to help them to make things right. Then they hire a general manager, often a new kid at the block, and everybody goes home. That is not right. The headquarters back home should be involved in their China operation."
Mark Schaub is one of the prominent speakers we engaged for our upcoming China Speakers Bureau. If you are interested in Mark Schaub as a speaker, please get in touch.

Shen Aiqin

NPC delegate calls for nationwide CSR-criteria

NPC-delegate Shen Aiqin has called for a nationwide system of criteria for Corporate Social Responsibility, reports China CSR. She is the chairperson of the board of the Wensli Group, a silk company in Zhejiang Province and one of the more wealthy women in China.

Corporate social responsibility has become a key topic for the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference this year. Shen Aiqin says that many problems in China are related to corporate behavior such as tax dodging, environmental destruction, loan defaults and food safety accidents. One of the key elements for these problems is the lack of a unified criterion for corporations to fulfill their social responsibility.

We are just in the middle of discussions of who to focus on inthe our upcoming Speakers' Bureau. This is the kind of people I would love to have on board.