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Greater Talent Network

Press: The Wall Street Journal

URBAN GARDNER - May 6, 2012, 9:31 p.m. ET

Talent Networking

By RALPH GARDNER JR. I hadn't heard of the Greater Talent Network before I was invited to its 30th anniversary gala. And it took several more emails before I figured out what it does, and that despite being attracted to many of the celebrity names attending the party: Tom Wolfe, Michael Lewis, Apolo Ohno, Sir Howard Stringer, P.J. O'Rourke, Carl Bernstein, Pete Hamill, Mia Farrow, Jeffrey Toobin. The list went on and on.

I finally figured it out: The Greater Talent Network is a speakers' bureau, sending the famous, accomplished and merely amusing around the country to speak at things like college events and IBM conventions. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to be one of those people. I could envision myself arriving at the Consumer Widget Convention in Las Vegas, getting picked up in a limousine, checking out the heart-shaped Jacuzzi in my suite, sharing life lessons with star widget salesmen, taking a few questions and then spending the next 24 hours gambling, or by the pool tanning, before pocketing a six-figure check and boarding the host's corporate jet back to my normal life.

Obviously, I wouldn't do more than a half-dozen such gigs a year, because I'm a serious person and have a real job. But it would be fun to have people fawn over you once in a while, and I could certainly use the extra money. The problem is, I have no keystone achievement or spiritually ennobling crisis that would make widget salesmen want to model themselves after me. Nonetheless, I wasn't going to let that stand in my way when the opportunity arose to sit down with Don Epstein, the Greater Talent Network's founder and CEO, a few days before the big event. It's always good if an interview has a higher purpose, if you get to knock around existential questions, and in this case I saw one staring me in the face: What would it take to get me onto his client roster?

"We turn down 99% of all people who come to us," he started inauspiciously. "My clients do this as an avocation, not a vocation. It's because they're great storytellers." And often celebrities, I noted. "Celebrity is important, especially in this day and age," he conceded. "What is more important is for the audience to leave excited about the speech." By way of a promising prospect, he mentioned Ronan Farrow, who'd been in a couple of days earlier to meet with Mr. Epstein and several of his 22 agents. It's sort of a casual audition: People sit around a conference table and the prospective client talks about

himself and his experiences. The whole thing is taped. I was forced to admit I'd never heard of Ronan Farrow. It turns out he's some sort of genius. He graduated college at 15. He's a Rhodes scholar and, still only 25 years old, works in the Obama administration's State Department as a special adviser. "He's the leading authority on the youth movement in the world," Mr. Epstein explained. Oh, and he also happens to be Mia Farrow and Woody Allen's son. I think the reason he didn't ring a bell is because he dropped his first name, Satchel. "All of my agents were fascinated by his stories," Mr. Epstein reported. "We're trying to put that deal together now." I'd be lying if I said this kid's blinding resume and Mr. Epstein's 99% rejection rate didn't throw me into something of a funk. Nonetheless, I pressed on in my efforts to persuade him to think of me in the same breath as Truman Capote, Jane Fonda, Jimmy Carter, Mia Hamm, Ben &Jerry, Chaz Bono, Candace Bushnell, former White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke and other cultural-icon clients past and present.


Press: The Wall Street Journal (Continued)

I confided that I killed recently when I appeared as the guest speaker at an upstate Habitat for Humanity brunch. "Were you paid?" Mr. Epstein asked artlessly. "No," I confessed. I also told him about the time I was emcee of the Battery Conservancy gala before a crowd that included Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and former Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau. That probably could have gone a little smoother. But when I wrote a column about my borderline panic attack, a reader suggested I try a beta-blocker. That's the medication I was on at the Habitat brunch and it worked like a charm. So I'm good to go. There's no reason to think I couldn't sell out arenas. "Were you paid?" Mr. Epstein asked, referring to the Battery Conservancy event. He was getting repetitive. "That's free speech. I'm in the world of paid speech. Anybody can give a free speech. The first question we ask people is: 'Who's the audience? Who's going to pay for you?'"

He had me stumped. So I went to his gala, held in a party tent on the grounds of the U.N. I was hoping to buttonhole a few celebrities to see what they talked about, other than themselves. The first person to walk in was Mo Rocca, the "CBS News Sunday Morning" correspondent and NPR "Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me!" contestant. A friend of mine, disappointed at my career trajectory, told me she once thought I could have been another Mo Rocca. "I love state facts," Mr. Rocca explained. "I have a great short-term memory." He went to Harvard. "Whether colleges, corporate events, or assisted-living compounds, I'll learn about the place."

I have a lousy short-term memory. So state facts are out. Susie Essman, the comedian and Larry David's foul-mouthed foil on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," told me that the Greater Talent Network wanted her to clean up her shtick when she signed on several years ago. "I felt that was a complete intrusion on my act," she confided. In the meantime, she's gotten married and gone through menopause. "I have all these things to talk about I can be clean about," she stated cheerfully. As a matter of fact, she was heading out to Chicago in a few days to do just that before some Jewish organization. "Everybody has a story," she told me encouragingly. "It's about your story." I wanted to meet Tom Wolfe most of all, though we didn't discuss his speeches. Mr. Epstein had said that when he signed up the writer a quarter-century ago, he said, "'The reason I'm hiring you is to turn people down.'" That sounded like a great way to structure my own relationship with Greater Talent Network. I could tell people I'd hired it to screen requests. That way they'd never feel pressure to book me a gig. And I'd never be disappointed that they hadn't. Mr. Epstein sounded amenable. "I'm going to keep my eye out for you," he stated, almost sincerely. "I definitely will.


Press: The Daily


Press: The Hollywood Reporter


Press: The New York Post

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Press: New York Daily News

February 16, 2012May 6, 2012

April 9, 2012


Press: The Hill

CEO reveals secrets of the political speaking circuit

By Judy Kurtz - 04/10/12 With more than four decades of experience, Don Epstein has a pretty solid track record of choosing up-and-coming orators who will be a hit on the speaking circuit.

But there’s at least one person he admits he was reluctant to give a shot.

While a student at the University of Florida in the 1970s, Epstein would book speakers to come to the school. He remembers getting a phone call about a governor from Georgia who wanted to give a lecture on campus the same day that actress Jane Fonda was at the university. Epstein says he replied, “Look, no one’s ever heard of him and no one’s ever going to.”

That “nobody” was future President Jimmy Carter.

Epstein relented and gave the Democrat a speaking slot: “There were about 60 or 80 people seeing Jimmy Carter in one part of the university and about 10,000 people seeing Jane Fonda in the other part of the university … But I gave him a platform and I don’t think he ever forgot that either.”

Five presidents later, Don Epstein, 56, is still at it. He’s the founder and CEO of Greater Talent Network, a New York-based agency celebrating its 30th anniversary booking top talent in politics, entertainment, business, technology and sports. The company’s roster includes Gen. Wesley Clark, former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), Meghan McCain, former Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and former Attorney General Janet Reno.

Paid speech can mean big bucks for some of the country’s in-demand speakers. Epstein says his lineup can command anywhere from $7,500 to hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.

But ex-lawmakers dreaming of cash registers ringing when they open their mouths probably shouldn’t get their hopes up. Epstein says, “We turn down probably about 99 percent of the people who come to us.”

For those who make the cut, Epstein contends a successful speaker can’t just do some tired shtick at the podium. The first thing the colleges and associations that book Greater Talent Network tell Epstein is, “We don’t want a canned speech. We don’t want a speech that has been delivered like a stump speech.” Epstein says the trend in public speaking these days is to do a Q-and-A format or a discussion between people with different views on issues.

Since starting his company in 1982, Epstein has compiled endless memories. But he says one of his favorites is walking the streets of Croatia with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

And it was Holbrooke, who died in 2010, who helped Epstein to avoid overlooking one of his now most popular speakers.

“If it was not for Holbrooke constantly calling, calling, calling me, telling me that I really had to speak to [former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn.], I didn’t see it. And then Ford became one of the greatest speakers I’ve ever seen.”

Epstein says the ex-congressman still ribs him about that one. “Oh, he kids me all the time. And we’ve both been very successful with him being in the circuit!”


Press: New York Magazine


Press: US Weekly

Exclusive: Bully Director Lee Hirsch to Embark on Speaking Tour

Entertainment April 20, 2012 AT 12:20PM By Beth Anne Macaluso

Lee Hirsch is taking his very important message out into the world.

The Bully director and creator of The Bully Project--an organization dedicated to fighting bullying in America's schools--is set to head out on a speaking tour with the Greater Talent Network speakers bureau.

Hirsch will visit high schools and college campuses across the country to engage with young people about the harmful impact bullying has not only on individuals, but on whole communities.

"Lee has a powerful, undeniable message about the devastating effects of bullying in schools," Greater Talent Network CEO Don Epstein tells Us Weekly. "It's a message people all over the country need to hear."

Hirsch's powerful documentary recently won a ratings battle with the MPAA; the film, which was initially rated R, is now rated PG-13 thanks to a campaign by Hirsch and other anti-bullying activists--meaning audiences of all ages can attend a screening without an adult chaperone.


Press: The Wall Street Journal

The British executive who exposed a $1.7 billion fraud at Olympus talked with us yesterday aboutthe pitfalls of the Japanese corporate culture.

Michael Woodford fears there are more Olympus’s out there.

Worse, he says Japan’s culture of deference does not make himoptimistic about the country’s looming debt crisis.

SALARY MEN

Woodford was the first foreign salary man—someone who has devoted his career to a single corporation—to be promoted to presi-dent of a Japanese company.

“Being a salary man is a very important thing in Japan, like fidelity in a marriage,” Woodford says. “You would think a salary man would beconsidered someone who wasn’t very bold, but in Japan that is what they look for.”

DEFERENCE AND OBEDIENCE

“Ive read about the former Goldman director in the press. I’m not going to say greed and wrongdoing is unique to Japan. There are scandals in Europe, Siemens, Worldcom, Enron. Human nature is what human nature is. Individuals will act in a way that is wholly unacceptable. That’s not exclusively Japanese,” Woodford says.

“What is Japanese is the culture of deference and obedience. These qualities make hiding corrupt transactions much easier. You have people blindly following leadership. I saw even more of this after I made it public.”

“At first the Japanese media didn’t pick it up at all. They’re very self-censoring,” Woodford says. “It took an overwhelmingbarrage of me banging drums and repeating points in the media. In Alice In Wonderland Japan people think they can just ride these things out.”

“Even after chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa resigned, the person who took over for him went before the press well intoNovember and stood up and defended those two payments despite their being so transparently ludicrous. That would never happen in New York! People like you would be throwing cabbages.”

NOT OPTIMISTIC“If this scandal tells you anything about Japan, it doesn’t make one optimistic that Japan will adapt to the challenges it faces,” Wood-ford says. “Japan has terrible demographics... and a debt-to-GDP ratio that makes Greece look like it’s in wonderful health. It’s only sustainable because the Japanese buy government bonds.”

“Without a Westerner who could articulate and express the problems and was willing to risk his career, to risk anything, the Olympus scandal would never have gotten out. How many more Olympus’ there are is a matter of speculation.”

This is an ominous thought for Japanese stocks.

“70 percent of turnover in Tokyo stock exchange is overseas investors. This is worrying when you consider the reaction of overseas investors to the Olympus scandal.”

“It makes a mockery of Prime Minister Noda’s claim that Japan is the same as any other capitalist country.”

SPEAKING TOUR

Woodford is publishing an account of his dramatic story in Japanese in April and in English in October. He is also going on a speaking tour and is represented by the Greater Talent Network.

“When I give talks people tell me it is a gripping and thrilling story. They ask themselves ‘how would I react in that situation.’”

Woodford is publishing an account of his dramatic story in Japanese in April and in English in October. He is also going on a speaking tour and is represented by the Greater Talent Network.

“When I give talks people tell me it is a gripping and thrilling story. They ask themselves ‘how would I react in that situation.

MICHAEL WOODFORD: Here’s Why Corporate Fraud Is Easier In JapanGus Lubin | Mar. 15, 2012


Press: The Hollywood ReporterSubscribe Newsletters Daily PDF Register Log in

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Former Daily Show correspondent MoRocca is going to the right place to learnhow to cook: the Cooking Channel.

Rocca will star in an hour-long specialcalled My Grandmother’s Ravioli, in whichthe satirical comic receives cooking lessonsfrom America’s grandmothers andgrandfathers. The special, which is beingeyed as a potential series, is set to air Feb19 on Cooking Channel.

“At 42, I’m finally figuring out how tocook,” Rocca tells THR. “My grandmotherwas a great cook and her ravioli was what Iremember from my childhood. I wish Icould go back in time and show up to herapartment a few hours before we ate, sothat's the show.”

The special, from executive producersLauren Deen and Gideon Evans, willallow Rocca to “insinuate myself intopeople’s families," he says, including afilipino grandmother and an Italiangrandfather who teach him how to makespecial dishes.

Rocca, repped by Gersh and manager Don Epstein at Greater Talent Network, is a prolific TV actor,writer and commentator. In December he was promoted to "correspondent" on CBS SundayMorning, after contributing for years to that show.

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Mo Rocca to Star in CookingChannel Special 'MyGrandmother's Ravioli'(Exclusive)5:00 AM PST 1/9/2012 by THR Staff

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Rocca, repped by Gersh and manager Don Epstein at Greater Talent Network, is a prolific TV actor,writer and commentator.

It’s Good to Be Michael LewisHe could have made a fortune in business. Instead, he made a fortune writing about it. Plus—a fortune for everyone he writes about. By Jessica Pressler

Collins Tuohy has told this story before, and by now her delivery is spot on. It was Thanksgiving morning, and her family were on their way to pick up breakfast. “Because in our household,” she says in her Memphis drawl, and pauses for emphasis. “My mother thinks that if we go and get food.” Dramatic pause. “And bring it back to our house.” Another pause. “Then it counts as home cooking.” The audience laughs as Collins, a twentysomething Kappa Delta in a leopard-print dress and heels that bring her a good four inches closer to God, shakes her head affectionately at her parents, Leigh Anne and Sean, who are sitting next to her onstage at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. Then her story turns serious. As they were driving, they spotted a boy from Collins’s school walking down the street, unseason-ably clad in shorts and a T-shirt. Leigh Anne asked her husband to pull over.

You probably know the rest. So did the thousand or so salespeople that diamond manufacturer Hearts on Fire had invited to hear the Tuohys speak during its annual seminar. At this point, practically everyone with eyes has seen the movie The Blind Side, which tells the story of how the Tuohys adopted that boy, Michael Oher, and transformed him, by the grace of Jesus and with the help of cash from Sean’s fast-food franchises, from almost-certain lost cause to millionaire NFL star.Oher’s story might never have been told outside Memphis if Sean Tuohy’s high-school classmate Michael Lewis hadn’t happened into town soon after that Thanksgiving Day to talk to his old friend for a story he was working on about their high-school baseball coach. Lewis watched as Collins, her brother, Sean Junior, and a six-foot-four, 350-pound mystery streamed in and out of the house and quietly wondered what the hell was going on.

When they were done talking, Sean Tuohy escorted Lewis to the door. “Well, I hope another 25 years doesn’t go by,” he said.Lewis paused in the entryway. “You’re really going to let me out of here without telling me who the black kid is?” he asked.Collins Tuohy hasn’t actually read the book that Lewis subsequently wrote about her family and that served as the basis of the movie. She doesn’t need to, she says, and not just because she “lived it,” as she puts it, but because the story has taken on a life of its own. Last year, the Tuohys published another book, In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving, followed in February by Oher’s own memoir, I Beat the Odds. Leigh Anne, who was an interior decorator before she became professionally herself, has appeared on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, is developing a reality show about at-risk children, and has become good friends with Sandra Bullock, who played her in the movie. “I could eat him with a spoon,” she told People, of the actress’s own recently adopted child.“But it was Michael Lewis,” Sean reminds the crowd at the Aria, “who got the ball rolling. And he has a new movie coming out, Money-ball—”

“Oh, don’t plug him,” Leigh Anne interrupts good-naturedly. “He’s made plenty of money off us.” Big laughs from the crowd—she has a point. But so does Sean. Without The Blind Side, the Tuohys would be a family of local saints; with it, they are something like national heroes, touring the country from speaking engagement to speaking engagement on a kind of paid victory lap. They may be the most enter-prising beneficiaries of a phenomenon now so common it deserves to be called the Michael Lewis Effect—the way the author makes his subjects into celebrities just by writing about them , endowing obscure figures with major profiles, intellectual prestige, even earning power.

“He changed my life,” Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane had told me the day before, bouncing through the Oakland Coliseum on a golf cart between his own press appearances for the movie Moneyball, adapted from Lewis’s baseball book turned management manifesto. Beane had been a backroom-style executive in a forgettable market—a pretty good gig if you like baseball, but nothing that would get you recognized in the street—before Lewis’s 2003 Moneyball proclaimed him a genius for his team’s use of sabermetrics, an arcane statistical method of evaluating players. The book, which sold over a million copies, changed the way baseball was played, made “Moneyball” a short-hand term for data-¬driven innovation in any field, and turned Beane himself into a savant legend well outside of baseball circles. Though he’s still not quite as well known as the guy who sneaks up behind him and slaps him on the back as Beane walks to his next interview. “Hey, man,” says a familiar voice. That would be Brad Pitt, who plays him in the movie.

“Michael does this over and over again,” says Don Epstein, the agent who handles Lewis’s speaking engagements, which are plentiful and remunerative. Epstein also handles Lewis’s remarkable spillover: When Lewis does a book, he often puts the people he writes about in touch with Epstein, because, inevitably, they are going to need an agent, too. Even supporting characters are in demand: Epstein books for Paul DePodesta, Moneyball’s number-crunching straight man; Susan “Miss Sue” Mitchell, who tutored Michael Oher in The Blind Side; and Meredith Whitney, , the financial analyst whose early warnings about subprime debt were highlighted in Lewis’s financial-crisis narrative The Big Short. “It’s almost like he stamps his own brand on you by writing about you,” says Whitney.

“Michael does this over and over again,” says Don Epstein, the agent who handles Lewis’s speaking engagements, which are plentiful and remunerative. Epstein also handles Lewis’ remarkable spillover: When Lewis does a book, he often puts the people he writes about in touch with Epstein, because, inevitably, they are going to need an agent, too. Even supporting characters are in demand: Epstein books for Paul DePodesta, Moneyball’s number-crunching straight man; Susan “Miss Sue” Mitchell, who tutored Michael Oher in The Blind Side; and Meredith Whitney, the financial analyst whose early warn-ings about subprime debt were highlighted in Lewis’s financial-crisis narrative The Big Short. “It’s almost like he stamps his own brand on you by writing about you,” says Whitney.


Press: New York MagazineOctober 2, 2011


Press: The New York Sun

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