JEZ ROSE ON LOSING A SEVEN-FIGURE BUSINESS — AND WHY FAILURE CHANGED HIS LIFE

For years, Jez Rose was one of the most recognisable figures on the global keynote speaking circuit.

A number one best-selling author, television presenter and internationally sought-after speaker, Rose built a career advising some of the world’s biggest brands on leadership, communication, behaviour and performance.

His clients included major brands such as Ford, Audi, Marriott International, Volkswagen and Philips. He appeared on the BBC, ITV, QVC and Discovery, delivered TEDx talks in both the UK and the United States, and was named by Microsoft among its top 10 most sought-after business speakers.

Earlier this year, Rose was officially voted among the UK’s top motivational speakers in a poll based on customer feedback, testimonials and live performance scores — recognition that reinforced a reputation built through years of high-profile corporate speaking engagements around the world.

At the height of his success, Rose had relocated to the United States, bought a farm and was travelling internationally for conferences and leadership events, often speaking to audiences of thousands at a time. His business was generating close to seven figures annually.

From the outside, it looked like the ultimate success story.

Behind the scenes, however, the lifestyle had become relentless.

“In my busiest year, I spent 233 nights in hotel rooms,” Rose says. “There were moments when I genuinely didn’t know where I was. I would go down to reception and try to ask, in a way that didn’t make me sound odd, what city I was in.”

The pace of life as a global keynote speaker, he says, placed constant pressure on both performance and identity.

“Delivering that many talks takes a toll. Your brain never switches off. You are constantly adapting, reading the room and adjusting your delivery in real time,” he says.

“The travelling is tough, but there is also constant pressure around meeting expectations. People have paid for you to be good, and that sits in the back of your mind all the time.”

Rose’s route into speaking was unconventional from the start. He says he never intentionally planned to become a keynote speaker at all.

“I didn’t decide to become a speaker. I fell into it accidentally, really,” he says. “I hadn’t even seen a keynote speaker, or known what one was, until about four or five years into doing it.”

The breakthrough came through an informal opportunity connected to leadership and customer service training around Disney.

“A friend whose dad was very senior at Lloyds Bank heard me talking about Disney, customer service and leadership,” he says. “He told me they were sending teams out to Disney in the USA and spending a fortune, and suggested I visit them and do the training for a lot less.”

“That was the beginning and, from there, it just snowballed.”

Rose believes part of his appeal came from the unusual combination of skills and industries he had worked across before entering the speaking world.

Before building his keynote career, he worked in children’s television, presented programmes including Saturday Kitchen, spent 20 years performing as a magician, worked in the ambulance service and even trained dogs for television and film productions.

“I’ve had an eclectic background,” he says. “Part of what I brought to speaking came from those varied skills I had developed. The other part came from a desire to communicate properly and make learning enjoyable.”

That desire eventually pushed him to qualify as a further education teacher after becoming frustrated with poor workplace training environments.

“I remember sitting through dreadful mandatory training sessions in hospital and thinking, probably quite arrogantly, that I could do better than this,” he says.

As his reputation grew, so did the scale of the work.

“More than 80 per cent of my work came through agents, which is unusual in this industry,” he says. “One of my first major bookings was speaking to 1,000 people in Hall One at the ICC in Birmingham.”

But while the business expanded rapidly, Rose says he slowly lost sight of the foundations holding it together.

“At the same time, as the business was growing, I made a decision that turned out to be a huge mistake,” he says. “I stepped back from being so involved in running it so I could focus on speaking and let others handle everything else.”

“The truth is, no one cares about your business as much as you do.”

The consequences proved catastrophic.

“There was a £150,000 backdated tax payment I discovered after taking what turned out to be incorrect advice from an accountant, and, with that, I had to repay £80,000 in VAT within five days,” he says. “I took out a personal loan just to cover it.”

Then Covid hit.

“Everything collapsed at the same time,” he says. “The work disappeared, the income stopped, and the lifestyle I had built vanished with it.”

The collapse forced Rose into a profound reassessment of identity, success and personal fulfilment.

“In the end, I had to sell everything, even the contents of my house,” he says. “I used to joke that I was busy on eBay, but the reality was I was trying to sell things to pay the bills.”

He now looks back on aspects of his former lifestyle with a sense of disbelief.

“I can’t believe how different I am now,” he says. “At one point, when things were going well, I was shopping in Fortnum & Mason and saw these beautiful silver pencils based on a Victorian design. They were about £150 each. I bought three.”

“That is how it happens. It becomes normal. Luxury luggage, expensive watches, all the things you think successful people are supposed to have.”

Rose once collected luxury watches worth thousands of pounds. Today, he wears a simple Mickey Mouse watch costing around $20.

“I get more comments about that than I ever did about a £5,000 Cartier watch,” he says.

The financial collapse, however, was only part of the challenge.

“I was a speaker. That was my identity,” he says. “But when you don’t have any work and aren’t speaking, I was left asking a difficult question: who am I if I am not that?”

The answer arrived unexpectedly through ceramics.

“I have done a lot of different things in my life, but this is the first time I have felt completely certain,” he says. “Working with clay is immensely satisfying, soothing, creative and meditative.”

Rose now lives in Rutland in the East Midlands, where he divides his time between selective keynote speaking engagements, ceramics workshops and preparations for the launch of a new ceramics studio in 2026.

His work is also increasingly shaped by Buddhism and mindfulness, which he says transformed his understanding of happiness after years spent pursuing external success.

“When I recommitted to Buddhism, I said I would live my life by three values, in this order: joy, passion and purpose,” he says. “I wasn’t really living by any of them.”

Today, he says his definition of success has fundamentally changed.

“I learned through all of this that what we call success is often an illusion,” he says. “I know people with huge amounts of money who are very unhappy in life.”

On the wall of his ceramics studio hangs a quote from late Zen Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh: “You have enough.”

For Rose, that phrase now defines everything.

“In practical terms, enough means my bills are covered and there is more money coming in than going out,” he says. “That’s really all we need.”

“But it also means something deeper. It’s about living in a connected, present and mindful way.”

After building a career around motivation, performance and external achievement, Rose says the greatest lesson came from losing almost everything attached to it.

“I have had what some people would call huge success, and with that came the distraction of continuing to grow and reach for more success,” he says.

“But when you lose it all, you realise that was never the important part. The impact we have while we are here, that is what really matters.”

To find out more about Jez Rose visit: SpeakOut UK