Co Down 'mentalist' David Meade on why he loves speaking in front of thousands of people, despite being a self-confessed 'loner and a bit odd'

"I find being on stage incredibly comfortable,” says the friendly and funny Rathfriland-born man.

“I feel much more content on stage delivering than I do at a networking event, or at the gym. I am at my happiest when I’m doing that because you get into a bit of a stream of consciousness.”

And yet, this is the man who says that as a child he struggled to make friends and was "cripplingly shy”.

“If I am being honest I still feel like that every single day today, but I'm really good at faking it. I just find it quite hard to talk to new people. I’m still a loner….actually, I’m a bit odd, really,” he laughs, admitting, he’d be a great case study for Sigmund Freud.

"I think that's why being on stage is so easy because I'm not talking to anybody. It's the most lonely you can be on stage and that's why I think I enjoy it."

Many readers will recognise the bespectacled 41-year-old from television where over the years he has showed off his impressive mind-manipulating skills for a series of BBC programmes. In 2014 his fame went global when he became the first mentalist to take on the casinos in Las Vegas and win a million dollars. But he admits he was never interested in being famous, TV was merely a platform to get his name out there and start his own business.

David, a former lecturer in International Business and Strategy, has built a reputation as one of the world’s most sought after motivational and organisational speakers, trainers, and facilitators (even the White House and Buckingham Palace have booked him for talks). He runs two companies under the umbrella of the Brilliance Group, based in Holywood, Co Down, which employs seven people.

The first, David Meade Events, is an incredibly successful business hosting live and virtual events for some of the world’s biggest brands, like Apple, New York Stock Exchange, Mercedes Benz and PwC, on the science and psychology of high performance.

"I talk about what are the small changes they can make in the way that they think, act, and behave that will help move the needle on the results they're getting, that boost their performance, that drive their sales, that inspire and engage their people, that help them deal with change.”

The business is 24/7 and David is constantly on the go, admitting he loves the buzz of dashing here and there.

“I’m great at speed and momentum, but I'm not great at slowing down.”

Running an international business also means there’s a tremendous amount of travel – around 20 flights a month – to get to his events, which can attract an eye-wateringly large number of attendees.

“There was one in Portugal with 22,000 people in the audience. Sadly, the big events aren’t coming to Hilltown, so I have to get on my bike and go,” he laughs.

To offset his carbon footprint, “for every single flight, every car, train and taxi journey”, his company partners with an organisation called Trees 4 Travel, which calculates his CO2 emissions and plants trees to help ameliorate the environmental damage.

“I'm not entirely convinced that offsetting is the right thing to do, but it's better than nothing and if I want to work and earn I do have to travel. For many of our clients, if appropriate, we will host virtual events.. During the pandemic we built a TV studio in my house. We ran all of our events like that. We made them look and feel exactly like TV shows, even now that studio still exists.”

​In November, David was awarded the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence (PSAE), a highly coveted UK speaking and hosting accolade which recognises those at the height of their careers. He describes winning the award as the “standout moment” for his career.

Yet, despite travelling the world and presenting on stage for blue-chip clients, he has continued to focus on developing his sister company Lightbulb Teams, which was founded in 2019 alongside his ex-wife Elaine. The pair have two children, Matilda,15, and 11-year-old George, who has complex needs and is, says David, the inspiration for the business.

To date the company has donated more than 70,000 prosthetic hands to patients across the globe, and it’s a project David describes as his “absolute number one priority”.

​”Really, everything that we're doing with Lightbulb came from George originally. His needs were so complex and severe at the beginning that I started to realise and appreciate that if he was born anywhere else in the world, he probably wouldn't have lived a single day. I want to get it (Lightbulb) to the stage where if I dropped dead it will keep going. It’s got to keep going because if that were to stop, it would just be an absolute disgrace.”

The prosthetic hands are developed through the Give a Hand programme, in which companies and their employees come together for a team building day, hosted by David and his team, to construct prosthetic hands from scratch. They also make water filters and wooden toys.

"These are people who have lost their hand as a result of either violent crime or accidents or congenital reasons. There’s kids as young as three and four, and adults as old as 90 years of age, can now feed themselves again, wash themselves again, write and type and work,” says David, adding that it is something he wants to grow.

Over the years, David and his team have travelled to Uganda, Cambodia, India, and Vietnam to distribute the products, and they have big ambitions to make a positive, life-changing difference to many more people.

“We now have a waiting list of well over 2,000 people who need a hand because the pandemic slowed us down a bit so I really really want to grow that at pace.”

The company also recently won a NEC Innovation Award for the prosthetic hands business.

"We do the stuff with the prosthetic hands because it’s the right thing to do, so to be recognised for that is very special.”

David’s business is project to turnover £3 million in 2024/2025, but his path to success has been anything but smooth. His father died when he was just 14, and he left school with no GCSEs.

"That (his father dying )was absolutely a not irrelevant distraction. But equally, if I had been remotely prepared I probably should have done better.”

After his father died he started going to psychics, describing it “like a type of counselling”.

“It gave me the opportunity to gather my thoughts. I look back on it as a positive thing, not only because if helped me deal with and process dad's death, but I still think that’s one of the things that got me to do what I'm doing.”

Outside of work, he enjoys exercise for ‘mental health reasons’ and watching a show.

“My favourite thing in the world, outside of spending time with the kids, is to be in an audience, whether that’s a comedy show or live theatre. If I'm ever in London and have a free evening I will always go to see something in the West End.”

And these days when he’s speaking at an event he still incorporates some of his clever repertoire of mind-reading exploits.

“I always do a wee bit of that. It’s still a passion and it’s still something I love.”