Bear with us for a minute as we hit the rewind button — it’s 1995. Two ambitious, budding entrepreneurs are working out of their tiny two-bedroom apartment, making cold call after cold call, fueled by nothing but caffeine, determination, and the belief that the right words, delivered by the right person, at the right time, could change the world.
Fast forward to today, and what began as a leap of faith has evolved into a powerhouse operation of 30+ team members across both Speakers Spotlight and our sister company, The Spotlight Agency — with May 2025 marking our 30th anniversary.
When Martin and Farah Perelmuter first launched Speakers Spotlight, they had no industry connections or an established network — it took them six grueling months to land their first booking! And they certainly didn’t know that their scrappy start-up, thanks to their all-star team, would evolve into a world-class speakers bureau that has arranged over 40,000 speaking engagements across 50+ countries to date.
The numbers tell one story: from zero to 40,000+ engagements! But the real story lies in what made it possible. It wasn’t just persistence or luck that got us here — behind every one of those bookings was a team and a community of speakers and clients that believed in the same idea that started it all.
Favourite Memory: “We Almost Got Arrested”
Even back in the ‘90s, video was still a key sales tool. Except this was a pre-YouTube world where VHS reigned supreme. Often, in those early years, those VHS tapes were delivered the budget-friendly way — personally by Martin and Farah.
One such delivery ended with an unexpected twist. A client desperately needed some speaker videos ahead of an early morning meeting. It was already 4:30pm, so Martin and Farah jumped into their car. The client’s building was in a rural area, one hour outside of Toronto, surrounded by a big fence. With no other option in sight, Martin hopped said fence, package in hand, planning to leave it outside the building doors. Finding them open, Martin made his way inside to his client’s office and left the tapes on her chair.
Little did he know, opening those doors tripped an alarm. With alarms suddenly blaring, Martin ran out, quickly hopping the fence, yelling “start the car” to Farah. They drove off with police cars whizzing past them, heading towards the building. The next morning, a grateful client called, amazed by their lightning-fast delivery. This is the same commitment our team carries today — though we try not to do any break-ins anymore.
Speech as a Catalyst for Positive Change
In those early years, we played with several mission statements but it always came back to the power of a speech in sparking real change. This belief became the foundation of our company mission — we’re a speakers bureau on a mission to change the world by helping our clients put the right speaker in front of the right audience at the right time.
This helped build our roster from 18 to 400+. Today, we’re proud to represent some of the world’s leading keynote speakers and industry experts, with our roster constantly evolving alongside our changing world.
Behind that roster of incredible speakers is an incredible team. Not only the most experienced (more than half our team has been with us for 10+ years), but also the most passionate, caring, and committed. That commitment speaks to something deeper — each new team member not only added capacity to our growing company but possibility, especially in those early years. And this possibility compounded over the last three decades.
What’s Changed in 30 Years
The most striking change over the last 30 years of business has to be the transition to a digital world. Oh the 90s, when we spent hours upon hours writing and designing printed catalogues of keynote speakers that would be out of date as soon as they came off the press. Oh, the 90s where the majority of our budget was allocated towards multiple mailings of said brochures alongside VHS tapes that then became CD-ROMs.
In between those mailings though, we were the first bureau in Canada (possibly North America) to build a website capable of hosting video. We put those videos online as soon as we were able to and while the buffering of those videos were almost as long as the videos themselves, this was a whole new world. And yes, you can bet we were early adopters of YouTube. It was a big transition into the world of digital, but we do not miss those VHS tapes.
Acting on Our Beliefs
Alongside our mission, we have six core values and beliefs that have brought us to this milestone anniversary — that have helped us weather the many storms that the events industry as a whole has experienced over the last 30 years:
We value relationships more than transactions. Read more.
We respect intelligence, not arrogance. Read more.
We do everything with the long term in mind. Read more.
We take work seriously, but not ourselves too seriously. Read more.
We believe impact is the best measurement of our success. Read more.
We credit these values to fuelling our success and growth to date and look forward to them carrying us through to the next 30 years.
What Hasn’t Changed in 30 Years
While the means to serving our clients has changed — we do a lot less faxing than we used to — the quality of service hasn’t changed. Our client relationships are still rooted in trust. They trust us to make good speaker recommendations based on their needs and the needs of their audience.
Why Work with a Speakers Bureau?
Speakers Spotlight began with the goal to serve event planners, speakers, and audiences in new and better ways. We took the path we felt would help us best achieve that. And here we are, 30 years later, still following that unique philosophy that has become the cornerstone of our success.
1. We Do Our Due Diligence
We take great care in choosing the speakers we represent. On the speaker side, we want to ensure that we provide our roster with the highest level of care and service to best represent them to our clients. And to our clients, we want to present a curated group of speakers that we feel are best at what they do within their area of expertise and price range.
There are thousands of talented speakers out there within a certain topic. We take the guesswork out of which of those thousands of speakers are not only the best for your event but are also a true professional in every sense of the word.
2. No Commission Sales Agents
Our sales agents do not earn commission. Instead, they’re incentivized to do what’s right — act with our clients’ and speakers’ best interest in mind. Our goal is to find the right speaker for each audience, not the most expensive one, and to develop long-term relationships built on trust and integrity.
3. We Depend on Collective Experience, Expertise, and Commitment
More than half of our company has 10+ years of experience in this industry. When you have that, you want to use it! We encourage collaboration and for our team to learn from each other’s collective experience to help us better serve our clients.
4. We Manage the Details and Mitigate the Risk
This is a two-parter! We take the risk out of the decision-making process for people looking to book a speaker, and we manage all the details it takes to get them there. Including when/if something goes awry, such as rogue weather, flight delays, illness, you name it.
Thankfully, we can count on one hand the number of times this happens out of the 2,000-2,500 events we book per year. But when it does happen, clients want to know they have a partner they can count on. If there’s a problem, we’re going to have a solution for you — sometimes before you even know there is a problem.
Just like that milestone booking in January 1996, we hope this milestone anniversary is just one of many. Thank you for coming along with us as we reminisced on our 30th anniversary and, as a member of our community of esteemed speakers and clients, we thank you for helping us get here.
It’s an honour to have served our partners in the meeting and events industry as long as we have, it’s an honour to see our speakers make a difference around the world at your incredible events, and its an honour to work alongside a community that loves learning, connecting, and making an impact as much as we do. Here’s to another 30 years!
