On Saturday 6 July 2019, at the Hog’s Back Spa Hotel, Farnham I took to the infamous red circle as the opening keynote speaker at a themed event entitled: ‘The Future is NOW’.
A little backstory
However, to put this into context we actually have to go back to November 2018!
A speaker by the name Elliot Kay had chosen to host a 1 day multi-speaker event, at the Natwest Head Offices in London entitled The Thriving Entrepreneur Conference.
Daniel Priestley, the Founder of the Global brand DENT was the headline speaker due to close the conference. Alongside the other speakers for the day, Elliot wanted someone to accompany Daniel and open the conference. I was most grateful to receive the call, and pleased my diary enabled me to accept the invitation.
Attended by almost 200 Business Owners from across the UK. I opened the conference with a brand new keynote I created for the event entitled The Future of Entrepreneurship. In which I shared details about some of the employment roles in decline. And that more and more of the younger generation are favouring project based employment rather than salaried positions.
One of the attendee’s was a lady by the name of Janet Alkema. She advised she was hosting a TEDx event in her home town of Farnham entitled ‘The Future is NOW.’ She felt my keynote would be an exceptional opening for the event, and would I be interested in presenting? We had a lengthy conversation regarding both my research into this subject, my role as the ONLY ‘Non-academia’ Judge for the British Education Awards, and my dedication to supporting the next generation on their journey towards their future.
We agreed that if I was in the country (Since signing with a new speaker agency I’m often speaking or facilitating masterclass workshops abroad) I’d be delighted to attend and present.
On the day
My partner and I arrived early. (We had both been working in London all week, and had been really looking forward to a GREAT end to another GREAT week). The weather was glorious as we pulled into the car-park of the Hog’s Back Spa Hotel. We were immediately met by Janet and her team busy in preparing the venue ahead of the visitors. Janet had recruited an EXCEPTIONAL team, where everyone had their roles, knew who did what and had given EVERY aspect of the event REAL consideration.
The careers to apply for, that don’t exist yet!
Alongside my role as international speaker, I am also a Director of the UK’s leading ETHICAL Business Coaching Company, My TrueNORTH, through which I am the Founder of the #ADDAZERO Business Challenge.
I was born into a family business, was brought up in 2 family business and have been a business owner since shortly after the end of my career as an Advanced Rapid Deployment Trauma Medic in the British Army. I’ve gone on to either buy, acquire or set up 4 of my own businesses, and now sit on the Executive Board for a Group Headquarters and Chair of Trustee’s for a registered Charity.
From first studying psychology, communication and human behaviour in further/adult education, and through all my undertakings both as a Business owner, speaker, author and coach; I’ve continually been fascinated with other peoples attitude towards change! This has led me to study over 150 British Business Failures! (The inability to change) create the #ADDAZERO Business Challenge, and research this keynote, in a bid to help people understand and accept;
The only constant is that of change
Although the constraints of TEDx determine there is only 15 minutes allocated to enable you to share your idea, I wanted to convey to both the audience present, and the wider audience, that we must understand and acknowledge that for the past 60,000 years humans on the planet have been evolving. And, that 30 years ago this year, when Tim Berners-Lee gifted the World Wide Web to the world, that evolution changed again! Giving EVERYONE on the planet, the means to be able to communicate with EVERYONE ELSE on the planet!
In this brief keynote, I share the current roles that are in significant decline. The roles that we see are going to continue to increase in demand, AND the careers you ought to start training for, that don’t even exist!
Over the course of the afternoon, I was asked several times if I’d consider sharing my slides!
Usually as a keynote speaker, I’d politely decline. Many people don’t appreciate your slides are a part of YOUR work, YOUR research, YOUR intellectual property. For which in my instance (and many other speakers) is our livelihood! It would be like suggesting to the taxi driver, you liked his car, could you borrow it some time!
However, this is TEDx. An Idea Worth Sharing. And therefore, I’ll gladly share my slides! – CLICK HERE to access the slides I shared at the TEDx Farnham event.
ADDED BONUS
I’d also like to go one step further though. You see, as Director of the UK’s leading Ethical Coaching Company, I firmly believe in openness, honest and transparency. AND, as you’ve read this far, perhaps you’d also like all the research I conducted in preparing for this speech?
In this E-Book you’ll find all the details to which I gathered in preparing for this TEDx, including a prediction to more than 70 careers that WILL come into existence in the next 15-30 years!