UnLeadership

29Leadership Is a Compass, Not a Map

In 1995, Martin and Farah Perelmuter took an entrepreneurial leap of faith. They believed that the right speaker in front of the right audience could create lasting impact and that event planners, speakers, and audiences could be served in new and better ways. Since then, Speakers Spotlight has grown into one of the world’s largest and most respected speakers agencies. With an incredible roster of speakers (including Scott), to date Speakers Spotlight has arranged more than 38,000 speaking engagements in over 50 countries and are thankful to have received many awards and accolades along the way.

(Highlights from our interview, recorded June 14, 2023.)

MY NAME IS FARAH PERELMUTER, and I'm the CEO and cofounder of Speaker Spotlight. For over 20 years, I led the marketing team, and now, in addition to that, I work with my partner Martin and department heads on the overall development of the company. I also work with our lawyers, accountants, and banks on the high-level works of the business.

When I was six, my grandmother got me a T-shirt that said, “I am the boss.”

At the beginning, we didn't really know what we were doing. Neither of us had been in any sort of leadership position; we'd never thought about building a company or a team. As the team grew, one of our motivations was to create a business where people would be happy and want to go to work. We both had come from jobs we hated for different reasons. You spend a lot of time at work, ...