Town Hall - Q1 2026: More Revenue = More Investment

2026 is off to a great start with strong indications that we are on for a record quarter. But we still have a lot of work to do.

Watch the video for the full story, but there is a key message for those who prefer to read.

More Revenue = More Investment

Every speaker on our books costs us money. From the marginal amounts on web hosting, and email communications, to the significant investments in time to onboard people, support them, and promote them.

Too few speakers bring in more money than they cost.

For the first two full years, Pomona Partners' costs have been greater than its revenues, as we have invested in our brand, our platform, and most of all, in developing and promoting our speakers. The gap has been made up through investment from myself and Monika.

In 2026, we intend to move into profit, so that we can not only make this business sustainable in the long term, but so that we can invest more in you. In training, development, tools, and promotion. We won’t be drawing profits from the business, but instead reinvesting more into everything we’re already doing, now that we’re confident we’re on the right path.

Moving into profit will require changes that will affect most of our speakers in some way.

Costs vs Revenues

On average, each speaker probably costs us around £500 per year directly. But that’s more like £800 once you factor in the unpaid time invested that doesn't translate into outgoing bills.

That means that we need to recoup money from every speaker on our books. If we don't, we can't continue to invest in training and development, in marketing you, and in the systems we're continuing to build to advance your careers.

How much we invest - and therefore how much we expect to recoup - varies depending on what tier a speaker is in.

Performance Tier

We don't expect most people in the Performance tier to be generating a lot of high-value leads, so we've set a hard limit on the time and marketing investment we can put into those in that tier. At the £20/month current fee, we're still losing money, but at least offsetting it somewhat.

Those in the Performance tier who start to bring us additional revenue by generating leads and putting them through us will rapidly get moved up into the Professional tier where we will then invest more time and money in their development and promotion.

If people want to buy more marketing and development support, then we will be adding some new ‘plus’ options that we’re experimenting with currently.

Professional and Premier

For those in the Professional and Premier to whom we're not charging a monthly fee, we have higher expectations. One of the places I don't think we've quite lived up to our principle of transparency is in how clear we've been about this. We should have been more blunt about the way we explained this.

In short, for you to be in our Professional tier, we expect to make at least £1000 a year from you. To be in our Premier tier we expect to make £2000.

That's not a lot. For someone in the Professional tier that means us handling one £5000 booking per year or a couple of smaller ones. For Premier, one £10,000 booking or again, a couple of smaller ones.

And to be in either, we do expect people to complete the Talent Map and keep it updated. Without that, we don't know how best to support you and we can't see that you're engaged in your own development.

Not Exclusive, But A Choice

We’re not expecting everyone with other agents to use us exclusively. We want that to be a choice.

You should want to put leads through us because we’re the best at handling them, getting you the best possible fee, minimising your admin overheads, and protecting you with solid contracts and payment-chasing. And because you can see that we’re investing in your career, with the training and development tools, materials and events we provide, with the growing capabilities of the platform, and with the marketing you can see us doing on your behalf.

All that said, if you don’t want to put leads through us, and the audiences we’re marketing to aren’t choosing to book you through us, then at some point we have to make a decision as to whether we’re the right fit for each other.

January Reset

As you will have heard from your agent, and as we trailed for a few months last year, the first step in this process has been to review the tiers to which everyone is assigned. Many people have moved tiers and some speakers have left us, because we agreed we weren’t the right fit for each other. We are now being more conscious about the speakers we accept to the roster with a specific view to whether we think we can help them develop, and whether we can pitch them to our audience. And, crucially, whether they’re committed to putting at least a proportion of their leads through us.

As I think we’ve made increasingly clear - as it has become increasingly clear to us - we have limited control over how many enquiries we get for our speakers. The marketing we do is powered by the assets, the brand, and the proposition you create. And even if we were to invest ten times as much as we do today (something I want us to be in a position to do), our spend and our reach will still be a fraction of that achieved by our speakers, all of whom are out there every day, building their audiences - guided and supported, we hope, by the training and tools we provide.

Virtuous Circle

We believe the Pomona Partners community can operate in a powerful virtuous circle. One where our investment drives your growth. Where your growth increases both your revenue and ours. And where that revenue gets reinvested, back in to your growth.

2026 will be the year we realise that virtuous circle, with your support.