Endurance athlete and adventurer, Olly Hicks is a highly regarded motivational speaker who has acquired several unique world records throughout his career as an endurance athlete. Starting as just a young boy playing in boats to becoming one of Britain's foremost young adventurers who has spent an impressive 2.5% of his life at sea rowing. Olly makes for a motivational speaker that's hard to be topped with his array of amazing stories from his expeditions around the world. At the young age of twenty-three, he became the first person to row from America to England solo this expedition also put him as the youngest person to row any ocean solo.
Upon return from his fearless adventure he was welcomed by Prince William of Wales and Sir Richard Branson who awaited him at Falmouth Harbour. What Olly had achieved on his 124 day voyage was so exceptional it was made into a documentary called Virgin Row which went on to win first prize in the Moscow Film Festival. His efforts also saw him awarded with the Peter Bird Trophy for Tenacity and Endurance at the Dijon Adventure Film Festival.
Amongst many other expeditions he's accomplished, a career highlight is when he rowed for ninety six days alone across the Tasman Sea from Tasmania to New Zealand. This is a notoriously wild southern ocean and Olly became the first person to ever do it. Amongst several extreme kayak voyages including a 200 mile crossing from the Shetland Islands to Norway he also has produced two award-winning documentaries.
Olly always leaves the audience with useful 'take-away' messages and has a true knack for being able to transfer skills he learnt on the oceans, in the deserts and polar ice caps into ones related to the business environment. Olly has a wealth of experience as a motivational speaker having spoken for TEDx, Google, LinkedIn, Burberry, Virgin and various others. Ollys talks leave a huge impact on audiences as he explores the concepts of finding the positives in failure, achieving seemingly impossible goals and perseverance in the pursuit of dreams. Olly delivers in a witty style and he is known to share personal lessons he's gained such as how he dealt with fear, loneliness, success and failure.
How to hire Olly Hicks
Contact the Champions Speakers Agency to provisionally enquire about hiring Olly Hicks for your next event, today. To get in touch, simply call an official booking agent on 0207 1010 553 or email us at [email protected] for more information.
** We do not accept requests for autographs, signed merchandise, fan mail, birthday messages or any other non-commercial contact with the speakers or acts. Each speaker on the website may not have necessarily worked with Champions in the past but are known to perform such engagements within the industry.
Olly's official speaking topics are listed below.
- How to recover and learn from failure
- What it takes to survive and win
- Life and death decision making
- Choose your own story
- When to turn back - risk mitigation for a binary environment
- Resilience, goalsetting and setbacks
- Maximal gains first, marginal gains second
- Simplify, simplify, simplify
- Lessons from the edge for the boardroom
- Operating in fast changing environments
- How to live your dreams
- It's up to you. Personal accountability
- Improvise, adapt, overcome
- Choose your attitude.
"Hard to work out how it could have been better.." - Accenture
"A thoroughly engaging and amusing speaker, whose dry, self-depreciating delivery belies the courage required for his incredible quests. Highly recommended." - Virgin Atlantic
"Excellent, a very inspiring and captivating talk. Can he come back when he's done his round the world race?" - Bank Of America
