Back on Stage: My First Talk in 3 Years

The morning of my first talk in three years, my Oura Ring flashed a stress alert I’d never seen before.

It was right. I was nervous.

Driving to Wolverhampton at 7am felt less like a meeting and more like an interview for the next stage of my life.

Good talk = I move forward.
Bad talk = maybe I don’t.

By 10am, I was standing in front of Synaxon UK’s board — a mix of UK and German colleagues.

No slides. No pitch.

Just the raw truth of what it’s really like to run a business: the highs, the mistakes, the betrayal, and the long road of rebuilding after being stripped back.

Three years of silence does strange things to you. But something shifted in that room.
People leaned in. They listened.

One said afterwards: “We could have spent a lot longer listening to Mark.”

That’s when I realised: vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s the key to trust — in leadership, in sales, and in life.

This is what my talks are about. Not theory. Not polished slides. But lived experience — the kind of story that makes people stop, think, and realise they’re not alone.

If you’re looking for a speaker who won’t give you another slide deck of theories — but the lived reality of what it takes to build culture, trust, and resilience — let’s talk.