"I am retirement age but the sky is my limit.

Every day when I wake up (although it’s hard to rid yourself entirely of the 40 years of tough Mondays) and feel like I will never be done learning."

Overview of earlier career.

“The first 25 years were the epitome of stability; a traditional route from Junior (read making the tea) to Manager with Natwest Bank. When banking changed radically around the late 1990s, we all had a choice; stay in the bank for heart attacks and early deaths or leave on less than favourable terms – most of us signed the papers before they hit the table!”

10 years of Business Development/Relationship management roles within a range of SME businesses followed where “instability became the norm”. The rollercoaster experience of 3 redundancies with minimal or zero redundancy packages with an uncomfortable spell of being on benefits is not one Ges would wish on anybody.

The trigger for change?

There appeared to be three defining triggers for Ges’ change:

“I had secured a career advisor (Peter Wilford) to help me re-shape my career, re-design my CV etc and I sent out hundreds of job applications but of course because I was in my 50s by then, I heard nothing back. When my career advisor put me through a Myers Briggs test, it was a clarifying moment. I discovered that I didn’t want to or maybe couldn’t ever work for another boss again.”

“My wife and I found ourselves living in an empty nest after both our daughters had left for university and Lidl opened near my home in Dorking! Our household bills went through the floor. These two factors were absolutely key in giving me the confidence to take a risk and give my own business a go. As an ex bank Manager my natural inclination is to be risk averse, but this encouraged me to have a go at starting my own business, even if it meant that we might end up having to eat baked beans for a while and live off my wife’s part-time salary. She supported me so that I could try something new.”

First steps?

“I realised that I had actually had a secondary career in public speaking bubbling beneath the surface throughout my working life. In the late ‘70’s I was ‘encouraged’ into Public Speaking competitions, the training for which meant I would be the one to volunteer to give speeches on Bank training courses, and volunteer to MC at events and to lead workshops both in the bank and when employed in SME’s. In my private life, I’ve been radio broadcasting, MC’ing events at the Leith Hill Music Festival for many years and was a Sunday school teacher for 30 years – if you can control a bunch of 8 year olds, a room full of adults is a cinch! Even in my early 20’s I was a British Junior Chamber of Commerce Regional public speaking finalist. What I didn’t realise was that when I volunteered to do these things, the others in the room visibly sighed with relief. I was able to do something that others found really difficult.

When I figured out that public speaking could be my ‘something new’, I took the advice of my career advisor and began networking everywhere.

After attending a great deal of networking breakfasts, I’d gained a stone and a half in weight but had also fully formed the idea of what I wanted to do. Then with the help of that newly-created network I began to be approached for all sorts of public speaking assignments, from keynote speaking at business events to delivering workshops and 1-2-1 sessions to build people’s confidence in public speaking.

It was this series of serendipitous happenchances – strange how these things occur when you are open minded enough to go looking for them – that enabled me to combine the threads of four decades of commercial roles together with a lifetime of experience in public speaking that had been running in parallel, and venture into the world with my new idea”

What Ges learned?

“All the skills I’d learned in my career combined with all the snippets of life experience that I didn’t view as important at the time combined to create something new.

Nothing in life is wasted if you grab it and make use of it.

Simply being yourself, rather than the person that you feel you ought to be because of your role or title, is important. People buy people. By being yourself, you are the authentic you, and all the more memorable for that.”

What Ges would do differently if he had to do it all again?

“Probably nothing. There’s no real value in what-ifs. What if I had stayed with the bank? I might have been dead by now with the stress. What if I hadn’t been made redundant in the smaller businesses? I wouldn’t have had to put so much effort into doing something new and I wouldn’t be where I am today. No. Nothing.”

How it feels on the days when he knows he has made the right decision?

“Absolutely liberating! I am retirement age but the sky is my limit.

Every day when I wake up (although it’s hard to rid yourself entirely of the 40 years of tough Mondays) and feel like I will never be done learning. I try to take advantage of everything I can learn e.g. being a founder Institute of Directors Advance member to take advantage of several evening workshops a month delivered by other experts on their field. There’s always something new.

I feel respected for what I contribute and what I deliver, not my grade, not my job title or my years of service. Also, the reward of building someone’s confidence in public speaking and watching them spread their wings and fly is beyond any salary package.

Opportunities are out there – in fact the opportunities are endless if you are open to them. For example. I’m collaborating with an overseas university spin-out on a virtual reality public speaking training project, which is really exciting. I’m also being coached in the authoring of a book on public speaking; that’s really really exciting!"

Any regrets?

“I have a couple of financial regrets – I wish I had not been such a loyal, naïve and faithful shareholder in the bank, for example. I should have had a six-figure retirement fund but I ended up with zero. With 20/20 hindsight, I wish I’d invested my first redundancy package in a few buy-to-let flats but I needed the money at the time to look after my family and anyway, the term “buy-to-let” wasn’t really talked about back then!”

If you’d like to learn more about Ges and his public speaking business…

Email: ges.ray@speakinginpublic.info

Web: www.speakinginpublic.info

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gesray

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SpeakingInPublic

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gesspeaking