Seven minutes from Buckingham Palace. A world away from it.
I grew up on a London council estate, a kid with a stutter and a dream I never said out loud: to stand on a stage and change how people see themselves.
Life went the other way first. By eighteen I'd been excluded from school and was homeless, with every door that was meant to lead somewhere closed.
I didn't know who I wanted to be. But I knew exactly who I didn't want to be.
What carried me out was something most people never saw. From fourteen, my dad took me to personal development events and I read the books on his shelf, alongside the Sufi teachings of self-mastery I was raised in. Twenty years of turning shelf development into self development.
Turned down for more than 75 jobs, I became an entrepreneur instead: market stalls first, then a successful fitness business. Then, with nothing forcing my hand, I walked away from it to chase that teenage dream. That's the change I help organisations make: on purpose, before a crisis forces it.
Since then, HM King Charles III has told me in person that I'd won a Pride of Britain Award. I've spoken at Clarence House and YouTube HQ, delivered more than 250 keynotes for organisations like Accenture, LinkedIn and National Grid, and the organisers who book me keep bringing me back.
Most of your audience will never face what I faced. But almost all of them know what it feels like to be capable of more than they're doing right now. That's who I'm talking to.
Ronan HarrisVice President and Managing Director, UK and Ireland, Google
