Bruce Merrin, a graduate from the UCLA Film School, has represented dozens of celebrities via his Bruce Merrin Public Relations company. It has been a top ten grossing firm in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In l973, Bruce booked his PR client, actor Michael Landon, on the "Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson. Bruce credits Carson for inspiring the idea to launch a celebrity speakers bureau. After the show at NBC in Burbank, Johnny Carson invited Michael Landon and Bruce to his Malibu home for dinner. When Carson suggested to Bruce that he create Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers Bureau, Landon offered to be Bruce's first client. Carson became his second client. Then, Johnny's world famous executive producer, Freddie deCordova, became client number three!

Bruce immediately coined the phrase "Tired of Hearing The Sound of One Hand Clapping" after he spoke with a meeting planner at IBM. Bruce was told that the IBM meetings and conferences were so boring, that their executives were falling asleep! So Bruce responded to the IBM meeting planner, "Are you tired of hearing the sound of one hand clapping at your sales meetings, management meetings, conferences and corporate parties?" The IBM meeting planner replied in one word: "YES!" Merrin began booking speakers and entertainers for IBM, and 34 years later, we still work with IBM.

Bruce has served as Vice President on the Board of Governors of IASB (International Association of Speakers Bureaus), the worldwide leading speakers bureau organization. We regularly book clients with Fortune 500 companies, custom tailoring the speakers and entertainers for each event. We recently booked Bodine Balasco, famous business motivational speaker, for Fed Ex. Bodine presented his award winning speaking presentation in the afternoon. Then he dazzled the Fed Ex top executives with his close-up magic performance that evening. The Fed Ex event was so successful, that they re-booked Bodine for the next year. We work with each client based upon their budget, the location of the event, the theme and their wish list. We take great pride in our ongoing work with companies like Microsoft.