Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) × Powerhouse Speakers
In March 2024, Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) brought Brené Brown to its quarterly Powerhouse Speaker Series, a 60-minute virtual interview for its members-only network of 18,000+ business owners in 60+ countries. I wrote the campaign that launched it. A mystery-speaker teaser opened the month, the announcement followed, and the session filled to capacity. All of it ran while Entrepreneurs' Organization was in the middle of a rebrand.
Scale this campaign operated at: 18,000+ members · 60+ countries · Emails in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese · Email, social, and chapter channels
The Series She Joined
Past Powerhouse speakers, shown for context. The Serena Williams campaign is one I wrote.
Serena WilliamsMy campaign →
Yuval Noah Harari
Trevor Noah
Simone Biles
Jane Goodall
Joe Dispenza
Andrew Huberman
Gloria Estefan
Nina GarciaAlso on the list: Sir Richard Branson, James Clear, Indra Nooyi, Adam Grant, Muhammad Yunus, and Malala Yousafzai.
What I owned
Powerhouse brings members a well-known speaker four times a year.
My job each quarter was to give that session its own moment. Most founders knew Brené from her TED talk. I led with the part of her work they could use at the office: her research on leading teams.
The audience
The Strategic Reframe
Every founder has paid for avoiding a hard conversation. Brené has spent two decades measuring the bill.
So the campaign leaned on her Dare to Lead research, the part of her work that's about running teams. Vulnerability still came up, because you can't talk about Brené without it, but the promise to members was something they could use at work on Monday.
There was good reason to think that would land. When Brené spoke to 250 members at an EO San Antonio chapter event in 2019, the founders Inc. talked to afterward kept coming back to hard conversations and holding their teams accountable. A few of them quoted the same line, "clear is kind."
From Mystery to March 5
It started with a question members could answer before they knew anything else, and every send after that gave them one more reason to show up.
Make members guess
Before anyone knew who was speaking, the first email invited members to register and guess the speaker on the form. A correct guess was an entry to ask the speaker a question live, and the hashtag #PowerhouseMysterySpeaker gave people a place to trade theories.
The teaser gave members something to talk about before the announcement, and registering was how you played.
Pay off the guess
The announcement email opened with "Finally the wait is over!" so the reveal read as the answer members had been waiting on. It went out in English with versions in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese.
Bring the Forum along
The next email asked members to register with their Forum peers, the small groups EO members meet with every month. On social, the first graphic went straight to leadership and the future of work.
If one person in a Forum signs up and mentions it at the next meeting, a few more usually follow.
Let Brené make the leadership case
A social carousel opened with a quote from Dare to Lead, and the "It's almost here!" email filled in the rest of her background for anyone who only knew the TED talk.
Try something more personal
A new graphic moved from leadership to courage in everyday life, the kind it takes to face a hard stretch or take a risk.
One last reminder before the fifth
The seventh and last all-member email went out four days before the session, a final note for members who planned to attend.
A chapter picked it up
Three weeks later, EO Fort Worth posted its own recap around a line from the interview and asked its members how Brené's work had changed the way they lead.
"We're only as good as our ability to learn from the last thing we did, whether it was a win or a loss."
Mid-Rebrand, Across 60+ Countries
EO was changing how it sounded while this campaign was running.
I was helping write the new voice and using it at the same time. The emails went out in five languages, and chapters promote Powerhouse to their own members, so I gave them copy and guidance to work from. Whether a member heard about Brené from EO Global or from their chapter in São Paulo, it should have sounded like the same organization.
Selected Writing & Real Assets
The Reveal · Announcement Email
This is the email that ended the guessing game. Look at the bar across the top, which links to the Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese versions. Plenty of EO members don't read English as a first language, so the translations reached a big part of the list that an English-only send would have missed.
Social Carousel · Week of Feb 20
The first slide is her definition of a leader, word for word. I'd rather let Brené make the argument that she's worth an hour of a founder's time than have EO make it for her.
Instagram · Motion Post
The motion version, as it ran on EO's Instagram.
Email #1 · Subject Line
"🔍 Guess the Mystery Speaker & Win a Live Mic Moment"
Why it works: It gives members something to do before they know who's coming, and the prize is a few seconds of the speaker's attention, which founders care about more than a tote bag. The first draft read "Can You Guess Our Mystery Speaker? WIN the chance to ask a question LIVE!" It got shorter on the way out the door.
Seven Emails · The Subject Line Arc
Lined up together, you can see the campaign speeding up. The magnifying glass turns into a rocket, then a clock, and by March 1 it's an explosion. It's a small thing, but in a crowded inbox the emoji is often the first thing people see.
Email #4 · Body Copy
"Elevate your learning experience by registering with your Forum peers today!"
Forum is the small peer group at the center of EO membership, and members tend to trust it more than any email from headquarters. Asking them to register together put the invitation where it would be taken seriously.
Results
What The Work Changed
The Scale It Operated Within
The session was free with membership, so a full room is the clearest measure of whether the campaign worked.
What This Work Proves
Give me a recurring event and I'll make each session feel like its own launch, from the first teaser to a full room.
Sarah Buckholtz · Global Brand Copywriter & Content Strategist · Entrepreneurs' Organization, Sep 2023–Apr 2025