Available to book
Matt Garman
Unlock leadership capability and uncover ‘Hidden Diamonds' with Matt Garman, leadership speaker and mentor. Matt helps organisations recognise the leadership capability already inside them, improving talent development, succession planning, and employee engagement.
Matt Garman is an entrepreneur, leadership expert, and author who helps organisations uncover leadership potential that conventional hiring and promotion methods often overlook.
Before turning his attention to leadership development, Matt built and sold two technology businesses, scaling from 14 to 42 people and £3.8m in revenue to a private equity exit. Alongside his business career, he rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, swam the English Channel, and completed endurance fundraising challenges. His book An Unconventional Journey Into Leadership challenges conventional thinking, while his appearances on BBC radio and various podcasts have established him as a recognised voice on leadership development.
Matt's own unconventional leadership journey led him to develop Hidden Diamonds, a framework that helps organisations recognise the leadership potential already sitting inside their teams- the enthusiasm, trust, resilience, and capability that formal CVs and qualifications overlook. He shows leaders, managers, and individuals how to apply it in practice.
Audiences leave able to spot leadership potential hiding in plain sight, use Hidden Diamonds for succession planning and team development, and recognise how growing people from within builds belonging, retention, and stronger leadership pipelines as AI reshapes the workplace.
Book Matt to give your organisation a practical framework for seeing its own people differently, and to stop losing talent it overlooked.
Topics, sessions and talks
Every leader carries credentials that never appear on a CV: the pressure they have navigated, the unconventional lessons picked up along the way. Matt Garman argues most organisations only look at the formal side and miss this entirely. Drawing on his own story of being overlooked before a single second look changed his trajectory, Matt walks audiences through a framework for noticing, naming, and backing the leadership potential already inside their teams, applicable immediately to who they might otherwise risk losing.
Most organisations say their people are their greatest asset, then hire strangers instead of promoting from within. Matt Garman speaks to a room that already works together, showing what overlooking existing talent signals to a team, and the engagement it quietly drains away. Using the Hidden Diamonds framework and his own path from underestimated to company founder, Matt challenges audiences to recognise the leadership already forged inside their organisation through real decisions and real pressure, and to see the colleague they haven't properly looked at yet.
Every founder starts a business feeling like they are setting off on a quest: an unreadable map, an untested crew, an uncertain destination. Matt Garman takes audiences through that journey, from building and selling two companies to rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, showing where founders lose the map and how to find it again. Along the way, audiences start mapping their own adventure, working out where their crew needs attention and what their treasure actually looks like.
Matt Garman's Hidden Diamonds framework gives leadership and talent teams a structured way to spot capability that formal CVs miss. Rather than teaching resilience, Matt Garman helps organisations recognise the leadership capability already inside them, forged through real business challenges rather than a training room.
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frequently asked questions
Something we've not covered here?
To book Matt Garman, email matt.garman@getapeptalk.com or call PepTalk on +44 20 3835 2929 (UK) or +1 737 888 5112 (US), and one of our speaker agents will contact you within hours to confirm Matt's availability and speaking fee. If you can, please include your budget upfront – it helps us fast-track your request. It’s also helpful to know the date, format (virtual or in-person), location, and about your audience.
Matt Garman structures his sessions around the Hidden Diamonds framework, a tool he developed from his own experience of being overlooked before founding and exiting two technology businesses. He applies this framework live with audiences, guiding them to identify leadership potential within their existing teams through the lens of enthusiasm, trust, resilience, and capability rather than formal credentials.
Matt Garman's sessions cover overlooked leadership potential, internal talent retention, and the founder journey. He is the author of An Unconventional Journey Into Leadership and built and exited two technology businesses, scaling to £3.8m in revenue before a private equity exit.
No. PepTalk adds no booking fee, so you pay the speaker's fee and nothing beyond it. The service, from shortlist through to contracts and event-day logistics, is included. For repeat or multi-event bookings, PepTalk can agree preferential rates with your procurement team.
Share your event date, audience, format, objectives and budget, and PepTalk sends a hand-picked shortlist within 24 hours. Each suggestion comes with a profile, a fee and a recommendation on the strongest fit. Once you choose, PepTalk handles contracts, travel and logistics through to event day.
The typical fee range is the speaker's standard in-person fee in their home market, shown in their local currency. It moves with format, location, date and session length: virtual sessions and shorter slots usually cost less, while international travel and peak dates cost more. Send your brief to PepTalk and the team will confirm the exact fee in your currency.
Not all of them, and it makes no difference to your booking. PepTalk's network of 15,000+ speakers covers talent the team works with directly alongside speakers represented by agents and agencies worldwide. PepTalk approaches the speaker, negotiates the fee and handles contracting either way.
Three to six months ahead is comfortable for most events, and 12 months is better for large conferences, peak-season dates or one specific in-demand speaker. Shorter timelines are workable, and PepTalk regularly fills last-minute and replacement bookings within days. Availability is the constraint, so get in touch as soon as you have a date.
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