Keynote Topics

How to choose a powerful keynote speech topic for your event.

Choosing the right keynote speech topic is crucial to the success of your event. We will work with you to create a personalized presentation that draws on our powerful storytelling and key messaging.

Creating a powerful presentation and honing the keynote speech topic is a collaborative process that is greatly benefited by information you provide. Keynote speakers need to understand who your audience is, what the overall event theme is, and what kind of a lasting impact you want your audience to leave with.

Our presentations use gorgeous photography and gripping video, audience participation and phenomenal storytelling to create a unique and memorable experience. The stories and lessons are drawn from our experiences preparing and executing our expeditions, which include circumnavigation the world by human power, rowing across Europe and into the Middle East, leading a National Geographic expedition to research the olive tree, and others.

Presentation Themes

Dealing with Change and Unexpected Setbacks

Imagine surviving a hurricane with nothing more than a rowboat to shelter you. To succeed one not only needs to deal with adversity and uncertainly, but embrace it and use it as an opportunity to grow and prosper. Learn techniques to deal with changing environments including altering perceptions, preparing for the unexpected, assessing risks, and improving communication.

Creating Strong Teams and Resolving Conflict

Julie and Colin deliver an engaging and entertaining account of the two years they spent circumnavigating the globe by human power, focusing on strategies they used to foster teamwork. It doesn’t get more stressful than living, eating, and working within the confines of a rowboat for months on end and this dynamic duo will share their strategies for fostering harmonious and productive dynamics. They dissect the essential components of effective teamwork including conflict resolution, motivation and communication.

Strategies to Reach Your Goals

Rowing across the Atlantic Ocean seemed impossible at times, yet through goal setting, managing risk, perseverance and dealing with the unexpected, including two hurricanes, Julie and Colin crossed 10,000 km of open ocean. By juxtaposing the difficulties they faced to the challenges in our business and personal lives, Colin and Julie offer an insightful and entertaining perspective on how to overcome our fears, learn more about ourselves, and set goals that help us reach our ambitions.

Leadership

Through their own powerful stories and the inspiration they’ve found in others, Julie and Colin encourage us to recognize leadership traits in ourselves and others, and find ways to foster those abilities. Fuelled by passion and commitment, leaders not only improve the world through their own actions but by the example they set for others.

Boosting Mental Toughness

Mental toughness is the ability to push through challenges, stay focused and reach your goal no matter what hurdles you face. It’s willing yourself to not quit even when it feels like everything is against you. Julie and Colin draw from some of their most difficult challenges including near-death experiences and share strategies they follow that you can use to boost your own mental toughness including preparation, creating discomfort, visualization, intrinsic motivation, and positive speech.

How to Exceed Our Perceived Limits

Julie and Colin demonstrate how we can all harness our inner strength to incite change and break through perceived limits to achieve success. Both Colin and Julie had challenging upbringings that included a reliance on social assistance, and little mentor support or guidance. They each navigated tumultuous younger years that involved drugs, alcohol and a plethora of choices. Despite these difficulties or perhaps because of them, they realized that we all have the power to create our own future and that the only thing limiting us is ourselves. It is not about where we have come from, but where we are going.

Keynote Speeches

We offer 3 main keynote speech topics to choose from. Each of these will be customized to address the needs and focus of your event. All presentations can be delivered by either Julie or Colin or both. The presentations include the use of powerful video and photography, and can range in duration from 20 minutes to 2 hours. These can be delivered by Colin or Julie individually or together as a dual presentation.

Rowboat In A Hurricane: Dealing with Change and Unexpected Setbacks

Imagine surviving a hurricane with nothing more than a rowboat to shelter you. When Julie and Colin set off on a quest to become the first to row across the Atlantic from mainland Europe to mainland North America this was not what they anticipated. But soon they realized that to succeed they’d not only need to deal with adversity and uncertainly, but embrace it and use it as an opportunity to grow and prosper. Julie and Colin share techniques to deal with changing environments including altering our perception, preparing for the unexpected, assessing risks, and improving communication.