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Mark Agnew is an adventurer, freelance journalist, and keynote speaker.

Mark Agnew

travels from UK

A top motivational speaker, Mark Agnew relies on failures to build resilience. In his speeches, Mark narrates how he failed twice to row the Atlantic but exploited the lessons learned from his failures to build resilience and redefine his destiny.

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5 out of 5 stars

Mark joined us on our team “away day” to tell us about his past and upcoming rowing expeditions. The way he engaged the team in his story and made us think about the way our team works going forward was really inspiring. Mark seamlessly brought our company behaviours in to his presentation to deliver his message in a very relevant manner. A true pleasure to work with.

Calum Rankine, Senior Data Analyst, Heineken See all references

Why you should book Mark Agnew for your next event

  • Mark focuses his talks on specific messages to suit every corporate event’s theme and can adjust the length of his speeches depending on the needs of the event owner.
  • He is blessed with the ability to tailor talks in order to resonate with the audience. He has given talks to multinational companies’ senior staff, including HPE and AXA. Mark has also delivered speeches to small groups in schools and on construction sites.
  • Mark combines failure, success, humor, and honesty to deliver talks. This makes him an instant selection as a keynote speaker.
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About Mark

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Keynote

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References

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Mark is a journalist, speaker, and adventurer. He is the founder of the South China Morning Post's Outdoor & Extreme sports section, known as the largest of its kind in any newspaper under the sun. Since its foundation, the section has proved to be an excellent platform where Mark shares his lessons and joys derived from adventuring. His lessons revolve around setting big goals for yourself and finding satisfaction in the effort rather than the results. Mark's motivational speeches help his audiences to develop resilience and live happier, healthier life in everything they do.

Why you should book Mark Agnew for your next event

  • Mark focuses his talks on specific messages to suit every corporate event’s theme and can adjust the length of his speeches depending on the needs of the event owner.
  • He is blessed with the ability to tailor talks in order to resonate with the audience. He has given talks to multinational companies’ senior staff, including HPE and AXA. Mark has also delivered speeches to small groups in schools and on construction sites.
  • Mark combines failure, success, humor, and honesty to deliver talks. This makes him an instant selection as a keynote speaker.

Mark’s life has been defined by ocean rowing, with two attempts to row the Atlantic having failed. After the first failure, he thought his dream had ended. At that point, he did not have a bank balance, and the story of failure had spread across the British tabloids. However, little did many people know that the saga would only open up new adventure sports opportunities for Mark; the South China Morning Post offered him a dream job.

The second failure to row across the ocean resulted from powers beyond Mark’s control. But this time around, he developed an understanding of the nature of luck, attitude, and positive action, which he packaged into what he called a ”mental pyramid” as a route to success. As he shares his failure stories and how he bounced back, his audiences realize that they need to build resilience as they work their way to success.

According to Mark, epic adventure seekers don’t need to go to distant lands to satisfy their desire. Instead, ”stayventures” in their home country can be very rewarding. This may range from connecting long trails by foot to long expeditions such as kayaking to one night in the hills. Some of Mark’s expeditions include running ultra-marathons in Asia’s uninhabited areas and rowing through the Indonesian Archipelago.

See keynotes with Mark Agnew
Keynote by Mark Agnew

Keynote topics

Topics:

  • How to build resilience
  • Bouncing back from failure
  • How to measure success on your own terms
  • Team cohesion
  • Mental health in the workplace
  • Stayventures
Watch Mark Agnew in action

Mark Agnew - rowing the Atlantic and tackling plastic

See keynotes with Mark Agnew

References

Mark’s mix of honesty, humour, success, and failure made him an instant selection as a professional speaker, fit for the specific purpose we had in mind. Mark enables true adventure to be relatable to the day to day working life of corporate employees by his engaging storytelling and transparent approach to articulate his trials and tribulations. I’d highly recommend Mark for your event or professional speaking needs, easy to work with, great content and a fast turnaround time. Exactly what we were looking for!

Craig Clarke, Senior Manager, UKIMESA Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Mark delivered a very engaging and inspiring talk to our sales team. He had the ability to entertain and keep the audience gripped, while at the same time sharing some quite personal and emotional insights. His misadventures were funny and his determination to keep going were heart-warming. His research into the psychology of human behaviour was fascinating, especially when talking about teamwork and affability versus performance.

Rachel Day, Marketing Great Britain, Bosch Rexroth
Non-binding request for Mark Agnew

Send a simple request. You’ll get a quick reply with fees and availability

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Mark Agnew
Mark Agnew

5 out of 5 stars

Mark joined us on our team “away day” to tell us about his past and upcoming rowing expeditions. The way he engaged the team in his story and made us think about the way our team works going forward was really inspiring. Mark seamlessly brought our company behaviours in to his presentation to deliver his message in a very relevant manner. A true pleasure to work with.

Calum Rankine, Senior Data Analyst, Heineken See all references

Keynote topics with Mark Agnew