I have spent 14 years as a motivational speaker for schools and now it’s time to scale the impact. I’ve had the privilege of travelling across the UK and beyond, speaking to young people and working with secondary schools and colleges. When I started this journey, the goal was simple: make a genuine difference to young people. I think that is the main reason the majority of people get involved in education to be honest.
The truth is, 14 years later that goal hasn’t changed. I’m incredibly proud to have built a reputation as one of the UK’s leading motivational speakers for secondary schools, working with students on mindset, motivation, academic performance and the skills they need beyond the classroom.
But over the last few years, something else has been developing alongside my own work. My organisation Dreams 2 Reality has been growing beyond me and it hasn’t happened overnight. We’ve gradually brought more speakers into schools, developed new programmes, built our coaching and mentoring services and worked with some incredible people who all bring something different to young people.
We’ve been learning what works, developing the team and proving the concept. But now it’s time to really push on.
From UK Secondary Schools to Students Around the World
Just before the end of the last academic year, I had the opportunity to team up with Village Camps again, delivering two leadership days in Switzerland to teenagers who had travelled from around the world to attend the camp. This was a different challenge from some of the work I regularly deliver in UK secondary schools. My job wasn’t to create ambition, it was to challenge them to go further, whilst protecting their own mental health.
We explored leadership, mindset, communication, standards, personal responsibility and what it actually takes to move from being talented and ambitious to consistently performing at a higher level. Working with teenagers from different countries, cultures and backgrounds was another reminder of something I’ve seen throughout the last 14 years:
Young people might have completely different lives, but many of the challenges they face are remarkably similar.
Here are the biggest challenges that students mentioned at the beginning of day 1: Confidence, pressure, identity, motivation, expectations and failure.
With that said, something equally exciting was happening with Dreams 2 Reality. We delivered another huge ‘Dream Team Day’ at Earls High School bringing together a range of speakers with completely different backgrounds, personalities and areas of expertise. Our growing team includes speakers, coaches, experts, influencers, performers and recognisable personalities. But profile alone isn’t enough for me the impact has to come first.
I want people on our team who can genuinely give something to young people, whether that’s expertise, wisdom, lived experience, knowledge, inspiration or simply a perspective that a student hasn’t heard before. For a long time, Dreams 2 Reality was heavily centred around me and the work we do here.
That has already started to change and now I want to accelerate it.
One Speaker Can’t Connect With Every Student
One of the biggest things I’ve learned from 14 years of working in secondary schools is that one person cannot be everything to every young person. That’s why diversity within our team matters so much. Different students connect with different people and some need support with motivation and academic performance, whilst some need someone who understands mental health.
Others need conversations around identity, confidence, behaviour, attendance, masculinity, resilience, relationships or their future. That’s where I believe Dreams 2 Reality can become incredibly powerful. Rather than schools simply booking a motivational speaker, I want them to be able to access a diverse team of speakers, coaches and mentors who can support the different needs within their school.
Our Boys Programme: Masculinity, Mental Health and Mindset
A great example of this is the work Ralphy and Warren are already doing. They lead our ‘Boys Programme’, focused around three key areas:
Masculinity. Mental health. Mindset.
There are huge conversations happening around boys and young men right now, particularly within secondary education. Schools are dealing with challenges around engagement, behaviour, identity, mental health, positive male role models and what healthy masculinity actually looks like.
Ralphy and Warren don’t simply walk into a school and lecture boys about what they should or shouldn’t do. They connect with them, they create conversations and they challenge their thinking. And they give young men the opportunity to think about who they are now and, more importantly, who they want to become.
The programme is already growing, and Ralphy and Warren will be working across many more schools during the next academic year. For me, seeing that happen is probably the clearest example of where Dreams 2 Reality is heading. Impact happening without me needing to be the person at the front of the room.
Both men are extremely experienced, serving firefighters and Ralphy was a former marine and Warren was a former pro boxer.
14 years in and the ambition is bigger, this doesn’t mean I’m stepping away from speaking, far from it. I’ll still be travelling around the UK delivering assemblies, workshops, programmes and leadership days. I’ll still be working internationally. And I’ll still be obsessed with becoming better at what I do.
But my ambition is bigger now. I don’t want the impact of Dreams 2 Reality to be limited by how many schools I can personally visit in a year. Over the last few years, we’ve slowly started building something bigger. Now is the time to put our foot down:
- To develop our speakers.
- To grow our coaching and mentoring programmes.
- To bring more brilliant people into education.
- To create an incredibly diverse team that can share their expertise, wisdom, knowledge and lived experiences with young people.
- And ultimately, to help more schools and impact more young people.
Fourteen years ago, I started out trying to become the best motivational speaker for schools that I could possibly be. I’m still trying to get better every single year.
But now there’s another challenge:
Can we build Dreams 2 Reality into one of the UK’s leading teams of speakers, coaches and mentors for secondary schools?
That’s what we’re working towards and I genuinely believe we’re only scratching the surface of what Dreams 2 Reality can become. Excited for a new term, lets go.
