The Accidental Entrepreneur

Alec Melman was raised in Brooklyn, New York, long before he became cool. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland and New York Law School. He’s also a member of the?New York State Bar?and?Notary. For some reason, we’ll find out why. He is an East Coast guy. He is also someone that is involved in the world of entertainment and speakers. He founded?Gotham, which is something that is a unique hybrid, from what I can see, of not just entertainers and comedians but also speakers.

Alec, let’s go back and hear your own little story of origin. I don’t get many speaking bureau founders or talent agency founders who also have a Law degree. I’m sure that came in handy but you can go back to childhood. Did you have a passion for certain comics or something? How did this all evolve from that to law school to where you are?

I grew up in Brooklyn. I thought I was going to be in entertainment, an entertainer, writer, performer or something like that. I went to Stuyvesant High School, which is my greatest academic achievement.

Tell us why that’s impressive for those of us who don’t know.

It has a harder rate of acceptance than Harvard does, for example, based on the number of students in New York City who apply for the specialized high schools. I got in by the skin of my teeth, a couple of points and it changed the direction and course of my life. I met some of my high school friends in various ways. They’ve come back to help me. To that end, my friend from high school and I wanted to be writers. I went to Maryland. I studied Journalism there and didn’t know what to do next.

The job market wasn’t great. I said, “Here’s a great idea. Let’s go to law school.” The thinking was, “If the writing career or acting career doesn’t take off, let me focus on entertainment law in law school. I could at least be a resource to my talent and friends and help them navigate that world.” I focused on copyright law, intellectual property and things like that. As everything is in this world, it’s not what you know. It’s who you know.

One of the benefits of growing up in a big city like New York City is you know a lot of people by virtue of you are around a lot of people. I needed part-time work to help pay the bills. My Aunt knew a woman who works for a solo practitioner, Larry Fabian. He was into entertainment law. I said, “Let’s try this.” I worked for him for a year or so. He had a client named Greater Talent Network, which was a big speakers agency. It was acquired by?United Talent Agency.

It was around for years and I met the folks there. That’s was my first job right out of law school. I went from law school, took the bar exam, passed the bar exam and then jumped right into working there. I worked there for about three years. I knew immediately I didn’t want to be a lawyer. On the second day of law school, I was like, “This was a mistake.”

I should have sat in on a class at least one time. If I can give any advice to anyone thinking about going to law school, it’s, “Go sit on one class,” which I’d never done. I was like, “This is what it is.” All things happened for a reason. I wouldn’t change anything. With law school, I went to work for that attorney. With that attorney, I met the folks at Greater Talent Network and because of that, I met my former business partner and cofounder,?Daniel Ymar. In 2009, he convinced me to go out on our own and we’ve been at it ever since. In 2021, I took on the CEO role and more of the head of the company.

What I hear often from founders of startups, and you would consider your company a startup years ago, when people are in partnership, what seems to work well is skills that are complementary as opposed to the same. If you’re both great at marketing but nobody has any tech skills, let’s say if it’s a tech startup, that’s not great if you’re both great at tech and no one knows how to market. Would you say that the two of you brought different skills that were complimentary to making Gotham Artists successful?

What Daniel brought was the spark. He had the vision. Every time I had an objection, “How are we going to do this,” he had a reason why we could. It was his motivation that got me thinking about it. I remember I was going in for an annual review. I was doing pretty well at the other company. This is 2009. I said, “I want to work from home 1 day in 1 month. I want a higher commission, the basic stuff.” I was rebuffed and I went to Daniel. I was like, “What was that conversation we were talking about?”

That’s so timely with the Great Resignation going on. The fact that you were so cutting edge going, “One day a month.” People are like, “How about 3 days in 1 week?” That’s fascinating.

He gave me the courage to try. It was your classic startup story. I got a $15,000 loan from my sister. He got one from his brother, a family affair from jump street. We worked out of my girlfriend, now wife and mother of my two children’s apartment on the Westside. She would go off to work as a teacher, and her roommates would go off to work. Little did they know that Daniel and I were going to the apartment working all day from there and hustling. Daniel was about to be the father of twins, his first children. We quit a month before his kids were born. I don’t know what he was thinking but I was not married, had no kids, no mortgage and not a lot to lose. It was good timing for me.

You’re growing the business. Did you start representing speakers first or performers first? How did it all begin?

The name ‘Gotham Artists’ is chosen on purpose. It doesn’t say speakers in the title. We were a little bit fortunate that the URL, New York Speaker Bureau, was already taken because we had considered that, but Gotham Artist was available. My mom is the one who came up with the name. We wanted it to be broad enough that we could have flexibility.

One of our angles was we wanted to be the buyer’s advocate. That was the difference in how we were going to approach it. Whereas the bigger speaker agencies with the exclusive clients and big talent agencies represent the talent and artist but who’s looking out for the buyer? In that case, nobody. Our pitch was, “We have access to all the same people. We’re going to be your advocate in the negotiating process and help you get it at the best price of the most seamless experience.” We built up the buyer side.

The other benefit we had was there are a lot of speakers in the market who aren’t exclusive.?Bob Woodward?is an example we always love to go to. He’s one of our favorite speakers of all time and a delight to work with. He was the same price whether you booked it through Gotham or 1 of 10 other agencies. We had a parody with our much bigger competitors on pricing. They couldn’t beat us on pricing on those non-exclusive so we focused on the non-exclusives and building up buyer relationships.

What happened over time is we got so many great buyer relationships. One of my favorite data points of the company is how much business we retain. We have repeat customers that opened us up to opportunities with speakers because buyers would ask us to go find someone who would open up a relationship with that person. The next thing you know, we started booking with that person. Over the years, while we’re still buyer focus, we’ve taken on a couple of exclusive clients and looked to grow that piece of it but always the person writing the checks is who comes first. That is the client, the buyer and then the talent.

You gave us a great soundbite, a tweet, if you will. “Create a seamless experience for buyers.” That is the essence of what you’re saying here. I know myself as a sales keynote speaker, oftentimes, clients say, “You were so easy to work with and responsive.” That is as important to us as the content and the outcome that we’re seeking, that you’re easy to work with. Can you talk a little bit about what a seamless experience looks like for the buyer?

I can’t tell you how much business we’ve gotten and how many conversations we’ve started with. I worked with so and so in 2021, and it was less than ideal. It’s the polite way to put it. We’re always going to send that extra email to check on something. We’re not afraid to ask. We’re the default. While a lot of companies say, “No. He or she won’t do that,” our default is, “No harm in asking. Let’s check.”

We’ve seen this experience over and over again, especially high-profile talent or A-List talent. They get on-site and the meeting planner finally meets them. They say, “It’s too bad. You couldn’t do that meet and greet.” They say, “I would’ve been happy to do a meet and greet.” Their big talent agencies should look out for their client and their talent’s interests.

It’s almost to a fault where they’re not going to bother them for things that are like, “We’re going to go the extra mile and look for speakers that go the extra mile.” We tend to recommend people that we know are going to do all the extras, customize the content, get on another phone call with them and make the buyer feel like the most important person in their lives for that period. It does not stress on their back to do so.

Sometimes it’s the little things, Alec. For myself, if I’m hired to go to a live event, I will text or email the event planner letting them know I’ve arrived on time. That’s one less thing for them to worry about, especially with the weather, canceled flights and who knows what else. You as Gotham Artists, one of the things I’m sure that you’re caring about is if God forbid, something happened that a speaker couldn’t get to an event, you have a whole well of talent of people who are quick to respond, can hop on a plane, do whatever they need, get in a car, whatever they need to do to get to something so that the event planner is not left with this big gaping hole to open their event.

Some of the best relationships we have with buyers are forged in times of crisis. It’s easy to look good when everything goes right but when something hits the fan, that’s when we have our chance to shine. We’ve pulled rabbits out of hats with 24-hour cancellations, getting people on private planes and doing whatever it takes. That is what I’ve seen. When there’s a cancellation or a problem, usually it’s how we act in those situations that will lead to long, strong relationships with people. It’s not that I’m looking for crises to solve.

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