Speaker Show Reel Benjamin Mee
This is Benjamin Mee. Hello, Benjamin Mei. Benjamin Mee.
Actually, I’m Benjamin Mee, and I’ve had the most extraordinary good fortune to have my story made into a Hollywood film starring Matt Damon. Based on my book, We Bought a Zoo, the film of the same name, tells an inevitably slightly streamlined version of our struggle to buy the zoo and restore it and open it to the public.
Many people find the story moving and inspirational, and I’ve now done talks all around the world, from Australia to Japan, and the States, as well as all over the UK. I remember, on our fourth day, my brother Duncan came running into the kitchen and shouted ‘one of the big cats out, this is not a drill’. And then he ran out again. And I thought, well, this is extremely unusual. And that was day four or five, for us. Still no money, but a real taste of the full horror, actually, of what it can be like runnig a zoo.
Earlier this month, after we paid the mortgage, there was literally 45 pounds in the company account. You know, on the 750,000 pound turnover, you’re down to that, and there’s no credit.
It was shortly after we arrived, it was my wife Katherine, she was diagnosed with a recurrent brain tumour, which news came at Christmas 2006 it was inoperable, and by March 31 next year 2007 she died, and it was a catastrophe for us, of course, myself, my children, and everybody here, my family.
People have often said to me how did you go on? Why didn’t you just think given up at that point? And I can immediately say absolutely not. Not even for a second. If we’d done that, wit would all have been for nothing.
Then one day, I got a call, which really took my attention. It was a call from an American lady. She said, I’m calling from 20th Century Fox. That was the beginning of the enormously drawn out process of Fox supplying the rights and then going ahead and making the film.
I went to a set in a position of extreme financial crisis at the zoo, and I needed to bring back something from the set that would tell the outside world properly, it was worth waiting and investing in us, and believing in us.
We got the shot. Look at that. Isn’t that fantastic?
Talks are tailored to individual clients requirements, covering motivation, achieving goals, team building, overcoming obstacles, inquisitive risk taking, something I’m now associated with.
Benjamin Mee. Motivational and inspirational speaker.