Jake Meyer
Mountaineer | Adventurer | Keynote Speaker
Jake is an experienced speaker, presenter and MC and has given over 400 talks about his expeditions, as well as several hundred presentations every year on leadership and management development topics.
He is comfortable speaking to small groups of senior executives or boards, or large audiences (1800 is his personal best so far!), schools, dining clubs, conferences, shows and private events. Internationally, he's spoken in New York, Hong Kong, Moscow, Hyderabad, Muscat, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and throughout Europe. He's spoken in the Ondaatje theatre at the Royal Geographical Society 7 times, as well as 8 times at St James's Palace and Buckingham Palace for the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Gold Awards, on 6 cruises for P&O Cruises, opened 2 climbing walls and he's even presented a BAFTA award!
For more information or enquiries about Jake's speaking or using him for an event, please contact Toby@chartwellspeakers.com
Jake’s presentations can be easily tailored, allowing for specific themes to be covered naturally as part of the narrative. He can also weave in, or present separately specific content on leadership and team theory.
Jake’s most recent variation of his story follows his 10 year journey to climb K2 – ‘Taming the Savage Mountain’.
Examples of key themes:
• Clarity of the goal. A clear and unambiguous aim is the corner-stone of any project, and gives you a decision-making handrail to fall back on when you’re under pressure. It might appear that the obvious mission statement for mountaineering is ‘get to the top of the mountain’, but in Jake’s experience, it’s anything but this.
• Building High Performing Teams. You don’t always get carte-blanche choice over who you work with, but you do need to create strong and trusting professional relationships if you want to prosper. The creation of simple yet universally accepted groundrules by all team members is key to this.
• Resilience. Being able to do the basics well, utilising your support network and self-efficacy are key attributes we can use to enable the maintenance of high performance when faced with challenge, danger and risk. Retain faith that you will prevail.
• Learning from failure. If you can reframe failure as learning or live-test planning, then you can start to appreciate that it is a fundamental part of any journey towards success. If you’re not failing (or at least coming close to failing) then you may not be pushing yourself, or the possibilities enough.
• Getting out of your comfort zone. Adopting a growth mindset in order to face up to challenges is fundamental to developing yourself. Only by getting out of your comfort zone and pushing the boundaries will you start to raise your personal performance bar.
• Embracing risk. It is impossible to operate without risk, and often the greatest opportunities seem to be surrounded by the greatest risk. What sort of mindset is required to enable a healthy appetite for risk, which balances boldness and recklessness?
• Making the impossible possible. Sometimes we find ourselves pitted against challenges whilst seem too difficult, too much, too far. Objective analysis of the real (not perceived) test in front of you, twinned with subjective emotional regulation is what will help you maintain the psychological arousal at the apex of optimal performance.
• ‘Schrodinger’s lottery ticket’. If luck is a constituent (however large or small) part of success, then why this is the most important thing you need in your pocket…
Selected Clients and Testimonials:
HSBC
“Genuinely brilliant, inspiring and educational. The feedback on the evening was really fantastic – 10/10 from a tough crowed. I would commend you and your presentation to others.”
KPMG
“Although I had high expectations, Jake exceeded them. We really appreciated how he linked his experience to ours in what came across as a very natural way and the story he had to tell was such a fascinating one that no-one could fail to be enthralled. Feedback from the group has been extremely positive.”
Lloyds Banking Group
“You made every effort to understand the theme of the event in advance and ensured that your presentation set an excellent platform for the business exercises that were to follow. Your delivery style was engaging and balanced the right level of humour and seriousness. All of the conference attendees without exception were buzzing after the presentation and it remained the highlight of the conference.”
Royal Bank of Scotland
"10 out of 10. Jake linked well into the theme of our conference and was happy to tailor his talk to fit perfectly with our brief - he had an interesting story and was very engaging. Jake was confident with a great manner and good presentation skills. We will definitely be using him again.”
The Prince's Teaching Institute
“There was also an excellent balance of speakers with a particularly inspirational speech given by Jake Meyer, encouraging me to think about the aspirations and ambitions of young people and their entitlement to a range of stimulating and exciting opportunities, both within the curriculum and in an extra-curricular context.”
Save The Children UK
Building A High Performance Team Conference
"The reactions from the group were very good - we were very impressed with Jake's charisma and humour."
Deloitte
"What was great about Jake was his ability to motivate and enthuse the audience in Moscow. We had excellent feedback, everyone thought Jake was an excellent speaker. He is able to deliver his message with drive, energy, passion, dedication and with a joke. He is a perfect fit with our young and ambitious professionals. The synergy was really there, and the audience was really energized by his presentation. Excellent work and a great story. Absolutely to be recommended and Jake clearly has a great future ahead of him.”
Benchmark Sport International
“Please pass on excessive thanks to Jake as well for great speech. He really understands risk and return – so many lessons for business.”
Hobsons
"We received really positive feedback from delegates who heard Jake’s motivational presentation. They found Jake very engaging and a motivating start to the day. The visuals were great and we give him full marks for both content and delivery.”
Commanding Officer, The Royal Dragoon Guards
Engaging, witty, modest and fascinating in equal measure, your presentation captivated the entire audience. Your insight into leading small teams, mental resilience and moral courage was genuinely enlightening; all who attended learned a great deal and will undoubtably benefit from your conferred wisdom.
Clarion Events, organisers of Destinations Travel Show
"The queue to see Jake speak went right round the whole exhibition hall; he was one of the most popular speakers this year at both Olympia and Birmingham NEC."
The Whitgift Foundation
"Jake was wonderful, we’ve immediately booked him again."