My Biz: Longtime friends manage professional speakers at The Tuesday Agency in Iowa City

Trinity Ray and Kevin Mills were friends before they were co-workers: The two met as students at the University of Iowa in the late 1990s and have been best friends ever since.

Their college experiences - Ray was chair of the university's lecture committee and Mills was a talent buyer for SCOPE Productions - shaped their careers.

Today, Ray and Mills run The Tuesday Agency, a small, full-service lecture agency based in Iowa City. They exclusively represent a group of about 20 professional speakers including authors, journalists, historians, artists and scholars.

'There is a changing landscape where people are starting to realize that an author's time is worth something,” Ray said. 'Every author who puts out a book has rights, including lecture rights. We negotiate all the deals for them to speak at libraries, schools, college, etc. We handle everything from booking contracts, to arranging agendas, and writing checks. We make sure the people we represent are treated and compensated fairly.”

Ray started the Tuesday Agency in 2011, after moving back to Iowa City from Boston, where he spent more than a decade.

With The Tuesday Agency, Ray sought to create a business model that was a bit different.

'It all comes down to relationships,” he said of building the agency's client list. 'We read our client's books and send them birthday cards,” and consider clients to be friends.

'We feel like that is a much better business model and better way to live your life. We are at the point in our business where we can be choosy about the people we decided to forge a relationship with.”

'They have to jive with our aesthetic,” Mills added. 'If we can all go out to dinner and enjoy drinks and share ideas then they are the right fit.”

Ray said being located in Iowa City is the greatest option outside of New York.

'There are all these writers in this town and no agents. It's criminal,” Ray said. 'We are so in love with Iowa City, and for what we do, we try to be ambassadors. There's a wonderful energy here.”

Mills, a former English teacher and book aficionado, joined the agency in its second year. He said there are many misconceptions about what a lecture agency actually does.

'We get lumped in with literary agencies because we work with authors, but we are only handling the lecture side of their careers,” Mills said. 'And because we are a small agency, you talk to us from the first call to the last. We are part of every conversation which is nice for our authors and the organizations we work with.”

Mills said he and Ray's attention to detail helps them stay on top of the many moving parts of hotel arrangements and flight changes.

In terms of the work they do day in and day out, 'we basically do the same thing, but Trinity does the heavy lifting of writing checks to speakers and taking care of the finances. We are very symbiotic,” Mills said. 'We make most of our decisions together.”

The two consider themselves lucky to work side by side and try to keep the office easy going and laid back.

'Our wives joke that we don't really do any work,” Mills said.

Know a company in business for more than a year that would make an ideal My Biz? Contact Francie Williamson at francie.williamson@thegazette.com

AT A GLANCE

Names: Trinity Ray and Kevin Mills

Titles: President and Vice President

Company: The Tuesday Agency

Address: 132 1/2 E. Washington St., Iowa City

Phone: (319) 338-7080

Website: http://tuesdayagency.com/