MEET
RICK CLEMONS
Speaker, Author & Coach
ABOUT RICK CLEMONS
Rick Clemons makes comfortable rooms very uncomfortable. On purpose. He came out at 36, walked away from a corporate career that looked great and felt hollow, and learned the hard way that the detours aren't the problem. Treating them like one is. That reckoning became three keynotes that have challenged audiences across the globe to stop negotiating their lives and start living them. His keynotes don't leave audiences feeling inspired. They leave them unable to go back to the way things were. Rick creates the moment in the room where pretending stops working and deciding begins. Author of Frankly My Dear, I'm Gay and host of 40 Plus: Gay Men, Gay Talk. When he's not on stage, he's drinking good wine, annoying his husband, and pretending his two grown daughters still need his advice. No fears. No excuses. No apologies.
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Rick Clemons makes comfortable rooms very uncomfortable. On purpose. He's the speaker who says the thing everyone in the room is already thinking but nobody has the nerve to say out loud. The one who takes audiences to the party, the pulpit, the wake, and back to the party. The one they're still talking about on the way home. Rick came out at 36 after 20 years of performing a life that looked fine and felt hollow. He walked away from a corporate career that checked every box and meant nothing. He survived the fallout, rebuilt from scratch, and discovered that the detours weren't the problem. Treating them like one was. That realization, messy and inconvenient as it was, became three keynotes, a coaching practice, two podcasts, and a book. His keynotes don't leave audiences feeling inspired. They leave them unable to go back to the way things were. Whether he's dismantling the status quo that's been quietly draining them, challenging them to own their truth without apology, or reframing the detour they've been treating like a failure, Rick creates the moment in the room where pretending stops working and deciding begins. His three keynotes, Stop Settling. Start Deciding. Leap., No Fears. No Excuses. No Apologies., and The Perfect Detour, have challenged audiences across the globe to stop negotiating their lives and start living them. No therapy language. No inspiration porn. No pretending change is comfortable. Just the truth, delivered with humor, a no-BS approach, and the kind of warmth that makes hard conversations feel possible. He's the host of 40 Plus: Gay Men, Gay Talk, where the quiet parts get said out loud. The author of Frankly My Dear, I'm Gay. And his next book, The Reckoning: A Gay Man's Wake Up Call to His Own Bullshit, is coming soon. He's survived raising two daughters, holds a world record or two, and once did something unbelievable at a whorehouse in Texas. He'll tell you about that one on stage. When he's not speaking, he's drinking good wine, annoying his husband, and pretending his two grown daughters still need his advice. No fears. No excuses. No apologies. That's not a tagline. It's how he lives.
Business & Management
Sales, Marketing & Customer Service
Motivation
Entertainment & Lifestyle
TAGS & EXPERTISE
Authenticity • Personal Reinvention • Resilience • Personal Growth • Courage • Leadership • Change Management • Belonging • Diversity & Inclusion
SPEAKING TOPICS
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Every person in your audience is hiding something. Not a secret. A life. The one they keep postponing because the status quo is comfortable enough to stay in and terrifying enough to name out loud.
Rick doesn't motivate audiences to leap. He makes staying put impossible.
Drawing on his 6-step framework, the backbone of his signature Reckoning methodology built across 30 years of coaching and leading teams, Rick dismantles the unconscious habits that keep smart, capable people performing success while quietly dying inside it.
This isn't inspiration. It's interruption.
Audiences leave having taken one real leap. Not metaphorically. A specific, named, uncomfortable move they can no longer talk themselves out of.
Because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Once you hear it, you can't unhear it.
That's the leap.Audiences walk away with:
A 6-step framework for moving from confusion to consistency, no matter what the leap looks like
The one unconscious habit keeping them in their status quo and how to name it
A single decision they will not walk back from
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At some point we stop living our own life and start performing one. For their boss. Their family. Their industry. Their culture.
The performance looks successful. It feels hollow.
Rick knows this story from the inside out. As someone who has lived the most personal version of this reckoning himself, he brings a rare combination of raw honesty, hard-won wisdom, and genuine humor to one of the most universal conversations a room can have.
This keynote isn't about blowing up your career or your relationships. It's about recognizing that the version of you still performing for everyone else's comfort is also the version leaving your best self out of the equation.
With a no-BS approach and a five-part framework built from thousands of real conversations, Rick guides audiences from fear and excuse-making to confident, unapologetic action.
Audiences walk away with:
A five-part framework for moving from fear and excuse-making to confident, unapologetic action
Clarity on whose truth they've been living and what it's costing them
The one decision that separates people who talk about change from people who actually make it
No cheerleading. No inspiration porn. No pretending courage is something you either have or you don't.
Just the truth. Yours. Finally.
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Everyone on the planet has had a plan. A career path. A relationship. A version of their life that made complete sense until it didn't.
And then the detour happened.
The layoff. The diagnosis. The relationship that ended. The door that closed. The thing nobody plans for that changes everything anyway.
Most people spend years treating that detour like a problem to recover from. Rick Clemons spent years learning it was never a detour at all. It was the route.
In this keynote, Rick reframes the unexpected turns, the reckonings that arrive uninvited, as the exact moments that create more confidence and possibility than the original plan ever could have. Not because everything happens for a reason. Because what you do with what happens is always a choice.
This isn't a talk about resilience. It's a talk about recognition. The moment you stop asking "why did this happen to me" and start asking "what is this making possible" is the moment everything changes.
Audiences walk away with:
A framework for reframing their biggest detour as their most important turning point
The shift from "woe is me" to "what's next" that changes how they navigate every challenge going forward
Confidence that the life they're living right now, detours and all, is exactly the one that got them here
No toxic positivity. No "everything happens for a reason." Just the honest truth that the detour was never the problem. Treating it like one was.
FEATURED BOOKS & MEDIA
Podcast
FEATURED VIDEOS