Speaker - Chris Ball

At the age of 14, after designing and programming a web site for his senior school and managing a team of fellow programmers to help him, Chris became fascinated with getting to the core of human behavior.  He cites the turning point in his life as the moment he ordered two books on Psychology.  He read them from cover to cover the moment they arrived; he knew at this point that he wanted to explore human behavior and to positively influence his chances of achieving his life goals.

Chris displayed entrepreneurial skills at an early age, he was bringing together teams of people to create forum and CMS software and began freelance web designing outside of school hours to make even more money, he was also organising a nationwide youth campaign.  Inside of school hours Chris was selling anything and everything students were willing to buy.  One of his most profitable ideas, thanks to his IT ability was to finish the class work in record time and then sell copies of it for additional lunch money!

He also successfully started the vegetarian group which lobbied the school to make the meal options more vegetarian friendly. And then when the Eco group was suggested by one of the staff he was a strong driving force behind that too, which again successfully caused the school to begin taking a much more environmentally friendly approach to its waste. 

Chris went onto study IT at College, he also began to get interested in business and shaping his own life, particularly as his early school years had not been good..  With the web design and programming came a lot of internet marketing experience and experimentation.  After a year of college, he was just about to quit when he saw Peter Jones from BBC show Dragon's Den on TV announcing his academy for young entrepreneurs.  He immediately applied to join and then worked his way through to being offered a fully paid place two weeks later, one of 28 out of 2000 people who had applied.  He moved to Buckinghamshire and enjoyed intensively learning business from people who had already made it in life.   During this time Chris started a student body group to help shape and feedback to the Academy when it went public.

Upon completion of the Academy, the Educational Director told him he was one of the top 2 students they had ever seen, he was also approached by one of the UK’s big telecommunications companies to consult on their marketing strategy.

Chris was given work experience at a property investment training company.  After one week he was offered a full time job in the marketing department. And within two weeks he went onto run the entire marketing operations of the company.  After 3 months the company took over the marketing operations of 2 other companies as part of a strategic merger, this resulted in him running the marketing operations of 3 companies simultaneously. He was an integral part in planning and implementing a marketing strategy for an event which pulled in over £500,000 in revenue in 2 days.

Because so much has happened in Chris’s life and yet he’s been able to perform consistently at a high level, he’s been able to uncover and breakdown the difference between the people who make things happen and those that just let things happen. 

With his wealth of experience in web, tech and marketing, Chris is able to talk about his past and his journey to where he is now, however it’s the area of the psychology of achievement and peak performance that his audiences receive the highest value of information and return on their time, with topics such as ‘How to spark a change in life and overcome mental barriers’ combining this with his vision, resilience and competitive drive, he is able to captivate an audience with his energy and passion.

Chris says “I strive for my audiences to be part of an experience when I talk as opposed to merely sitting and listening - it’s way too passive.”