Verification Standards
The rules behind the mark, in writing.
SP Verified confirms that a speaking engagement happened as described. That is the whole job. This page is the standard every record is checked against: the evidence rules, the statuses, the media rules, and what happens when something does not check out.
What verification is
Verification is authentication, never grading. A verified engagement means the booking was confirmed against evidence. It is not a rating, a grade, a ranking, a review, or a guarantee of quality, and SP Verified does not endorse any speaker.
There are no scores and no leaderboards, and money never buys the verdict. Membership buys the packet, the tools, and the work of checking. It never buys a status, a placement, or an outcome, for anyone, at any price.
The evidence rules
A document stands on its own
A signed contract, an invoice, or a DocuSign record for the engagement, found attached to the email thread around the booking, verifies the engagement by itself. Paper that was exchanged between the parties at the time is the strongest evidence there is.
Anything else takes two sources
An engagement that rests on a list or a spreadsheet needs one more source beside it: an invoice, an email chain, or a contract. If the second source contradicts the first, the engagement stays listed, never verified, and goes back for review instead of being published on a maybe.
Confirmation from the people who booked it
Bureaus, planners, and organizations can confirm the engagements they booked. A bureau is only ever asked about engagements the evidence ties to that bureau. Engagements a speaker confirms about their own history are labeled as speaker-confirmed, in the open, so a reader always knows which kind of confirmation they are looking at.
The five statuses
Every engagement on a record carries exactly one status, and the status is always visible.
Verified
The engagement is confirmed under the evidence rules below: a document that stands on its own, confirmation from the bureau, planner, or organization that booked it, or the speaker\u2019s own confirmation, which is labeled \u201cconfirmed by the speaker\u201d wherever it appears. Only verified engagements carry the SP Verified mark and count on the public record.
Listed
The speaker has listed the engagement, but it has not been evidenced yet. A listed engagement is shown as listed, never as verified. It carries no mark and counts for nothing until the evidence lands.
Pending
A confirmation request is out with the bureau, planner, or organization that booked the engagement, and the answer has not come back yet. Pending is a waiting room, not a verdict in either direction.
Expired
A verification that once stood has lapsed: the confirmation behind it aged out or was not renewed. The record says so, in plain sight, rather than quietly keeping an old confirmation looking current.
Disputed
Someone with a genuine connection to the engagement has challenged it. A disputed engagement is flagged on the record while it is reviewed under the dispute process below, and it does not present as clean until the review closes.
When an engagement cannot be evidenced
It stays listed, and that is all that happens. Nobody is publicly rejected, called out, or marked down. An engagement without evidence simply does not carry the mark, the same as a claim in a bio carries no mark. When the evidence shows up later, the status changes and the record updates.
Media rules
Packets carry current photos and current video only. Footage and images must show the speaker as they work today, not a decade ago. AI-generated media is not accepted in a packet: no synthetic headshots, no generated stage footage, no fabricated audience shots. A packet is evidence, and evidence has to be real.
Disputes and corrections
Anyone with a genuine connection to an engagement (the speaker, the bureau, the planner, the organization) can dispute it. A dispute flags the engagement as disputed on the record while it is reviewed against the evidence. If the evidence does not hold, the status is corrected or the engagement comes off the record, and the change stays visible in the record\u2019s history. If the evidence holds, the dispute closes and the flag comes off.
The same standards apply to every member equally, including the founder. Kenyon Salo is an active paying member, same as everyone else, and his record is verified under these rules, engagement by engagement, with no exemption.
These standards are published here in full. The Terms of Service, which govern every account, apply alongside them. Read the Terms of Service Questions the standards do not cover are answered on the FAQ page. Read the FAQ