Larry Jacobson

Award-winning author, circumnavigator, adventurer and inspiring speaker

When it comes to overcoming tough challenges, rising to fearless leadership, and living a life filled with passion, Larry Jacobson hasn’t just been around the block. He’s been around the world.

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Larry Jacobson's 2024 biography

Larry Jacobson Leadership Speaker and Adventurer

Larry Jacobson is a recognized thought leader in the field of non-fiscal retirement lifestyle planning. His work is based on his own successful experience and that of his clients. He was recently named “Retirement Coach of the Year” by the Retirement Coaches Association. His newest book is, Your ideal Retirement Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Retiring with Purpose and Fulfillment.

Successfully transitioning from CEO to sailor, he achieved his dream of sailing around the world, then from sailor to six-time award-winning author, coach, and two-time TEDx motivational speaker. His fields of expertise are Re-defining Retirement, Achieving Your Dreams, Peak Performance, Navigating Entrepreneurship, Living with Passion, Embracing Change, Finding Happiness, and Leadership Skills.

Larry is a natural-born inspirational speaker, and to solidify his skills, was trained by the best speakers in the field. He is a Certified  World Class Speaking Coach and knows how to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. He’s wise, funny, and delivers your message with impact.

A California native, circumnavigator and adventurer, Larry Jacobson is an avid sailor with over 50,000 blue water miles under his keel. He is the creator of Sail Into Retirement™, a self-guided video program, which combines home study and personal coaching to ease the transition from work to retirement.

He is author of the children’s version of that journey, Let’s Go! He also recently published Navigating Entrepreneurship, as a book and an online video course.

Jacobson engages his audiences with vivid storytelling and exciting photos and video, placing them right in the center of the adventure… and illuminating valuable insights on how to set goals, persevere in the face of adversity, achieve new levels of personal success, and fulfill any dream, no matter how improbable or long-deferred.

Jacobson’s business acumen, his deep knowledge of sales and marketing, and his sense of humor are all on board in his keynote speeches. Energetic and upbeat, he not only shares his wisdom, wit, and charisma, he also draws powerful parallels to how participants can apply his lessons in their own personal and business lives.

On the topics of Leadership Development and sales-Performance training, Larry Jacobson is the speaker of choice for many top organizations around the nation. His customized keynotes and hands-on training-workshops are crafted specifically to the goals, objectives, and needs of your event.

Jacobson’s leadership experience comes from experience. After a successful career in corporate America, Larry Jacobson fearlessly abandoned his financial security and comfort zone to fulfill a lifelong dream and sail around the world. During his six years circumnavigating the globe, he accumulated priceless, hard-won experiences and life-lessons: new insights on how to master your fears and limitations, persevere through the inevitable storms on the way to success, and live out your dreams against all odds.

After a successful career in corporate America, Larry Jacobson fearlessly abandoned his financial security and comfort zone to sail around the world and fulfill a lifelong dream. During his six years circumnavigating the globe, he accumulated priceless and hard-won leadership experiences – new insights on how to master your fears and limitations, persevere through the inevitable storms on the way to success, and live your dreams against all odds.

Larry’s dynamic recounting of his incredible journey, and the lessons he’s drawn from it, shine as a navigational beacon of inspiration for anyone who’s ever aspired to achieve great things in their business and personal life.

From the tsunami in Thailand to pirates in the Gulf of Aden, the six-year journey presented an astonishing number of life-threatening events, any one of which could derail such an undertaking. Instead, each challenge taught Jacobson his passion was what drove him through every obstacle put in his way. It’s this passion he inspires his audience to live with in their own lives.

A True Achiever with Outstanding Leadership Skills His Entire Life

A California native, Larry Jacobson grew up on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean. With degrees from the University of California Irvine and Berkeley, his entrepreneurial and adventurous spirit flourished when he started an adventure travel company leading whitewater-rafting explorations on then-unchartered rivers in New Zealand.

From Vice-President to President, to CEO – He Understands Business

  • Larry’s career in incentive travel began as the industry launched into hyper-growth.
  • After just five years, he founded World Class Incentives
  • As CEO, with active roles in sales and marketing, he led the company to a top leadership position in the incentive and meeting planning industry.
  • Jacobson expertly analyzed client distribution systems and applied performance-boosting incentives to increase sales, employee satisfaction, and dealer/distributor retention.
  • World Class produced memorable events recognized industry-wide as the gold standard.

Author of the Six-Time Award Winning Best Seller: The Boy Behind the Gate

After 20 years in business, he seized the opportunity to make his dream of a lifetime come true. The account of his adventures at sea is now published in the six-time Award-winning Best-seller, The Boy Behind the Gate. During his odyssey, Larry and his crew faced innumerable challenges, learned the true meaning of perseverance, and experienced first-hand why so few people who try to sail around the world, complete the journey.

Redefining Retirement

In addition to his inspirational and captivating messages promoting dream realization and pursuit of success in the midst of adversity, Larry is a leading authority in the field of redefining retirement. His books, videos courses, and keynotes address the all-important questions about non-financial retirement planning. What happens when you lose your lifelong identity from your career? What will be your encore? How do you make your transition a successful one to provide a continuous life of purpose and fulfillment? Company employees, association members, and financial planners all benefit from the practical wealth of tools and information Larry provides. Packed ballrooms and standing ovations are common for these speeches, as he speaks with authority from experience.

Larry Jacobson's 2024 talks & topics

Make Passion Your Priority

From TEDx talks to corporate meetings, making passion your priority is now Larry Jacobsons single most requested speech. Larry opens his heart to tell the story of discovering his passion for sailing at the age of 13. Then he jumps right in to the lives of the audience and how important passion is for them, how to find it, and how it can improve the quality of their work and personal lives.

By getting to know you and your audience in advance, Larry then weaves his tale of passion into the work lives of the audience with great effectiveness using stories and slides from his 6 years of sailing around the world.

Humor, emotion, and passion are keys to delivering this keynote and Larry Jacobson has them all.

Navigating Leadership: Leadership Lessons Learned at Sea

As a leader in sales and marketing for twenty years, and then captaining his own boat around the world, Larry Jacobson speaks with unique authority and credibility. As a leader and adventurer, he weaves tales of his six-year odyssey circumnavigating the globe with the challenges of leadership in our fast-paced business world.

There are similarities in leading your crew while facing 30-foot walls of water slamming into your boat in a horrific Red Sea storm, and leading in your company. Its lonely, scary, and its easy to want to make it all go away. Making your dream of sailing around the world come true doesn’t happen by luck, but by good leadership and visualizing achievement.

Like sailing around the world, leadership in business is making decisions, taking risks, maintaining a good attitude, facing fears, staying focused, and digging deep for strength and perseverance.

This keynote is the perfect fit for any sales meeting, conference, association, or incentive program, your attendees will learn:

  • How to feel comfortable taking risks
  • The skills of recognizing fears and using them to their advantage while in a leadership role
  • How to make decisions more promptly and effectively
  • That without dreams, leaders have nowhere to lead to
  • The importance of goal-setting as part of being a leader
  • That tenacity is a skill best learned from practice
  • That a leader has to lead all the way to the final conclusion.

As a true thought leader in the field of leadership, Jacobson’s credibility, wit, and eagerness for you to have a successful event, add up to a great keynote. He is a well seasoned speaker with over 20 years experience in the event industry. He’s a great leader for your event.

Living Your Unstoppable Life!

Very few people achieve the status of circumnavigator. In fact, many more people climb Mt. Everest each year. Yet Larry Jacobson decided as a 16-year-old boy that sailing around the world was what he wanted to do and he never let go of that dream.

There were many times before and during his challenging six-year odyssey that he could have quit and jumped ship, as so many do. But he didn’t.

Sailing around the world is only one of Larry’s achievements. Throughout his life, he has strived for and achieved great endeavors, both in his professional and personal life. He knows how to make dreams come true, no matter who or what gets in the way. It’s this quality of being unstoppable and refusing to settle for less than your best that makes the difference between mere existence and living the life of your dreams.

Upon returning from his six-year voyage, visiting 40 countries, sailing over 40,000 miles, and overcoming innumerable challenges, he turned his experience into an Amazon #1 seller, six-time award-winning book.

In this keynote, Larry inspires his audience to dream again, overcome obstacles that stand in the way of honoring their own dreams, and transform them into reality.

This keynote is a perfect fit for any general motivational type event including sales meetings, conferences, associations, and incentive programs. Your attendees will learn:

  • How to awaken our dormant dreams and turn them into actionable goals
  • How good things in our lives get in the way of great things
  • Why staying focused on your dream is so critical
  • How to see and mark the value in every day
  • Five steps to start living Your Unstoppable Life and fill it with Love, Laughter and Passion

Join Larry for this inspiring, empowering and entertaining keynote that will have your audience remembering and recommitting to what’s really most important to them.

The 22-Minute Keynote

How much of your audience is still listening after 22 minutes? After giving two TEDx talks, Larry Jacobson is convinced that you should be able to say what you want within that time frame. By doing so, you’re guaranteed the audience is still listening and absorbing.

By carefully crafting each and every word, not beating around the bush, and making every sentence count, Larry believes he can accomplish the job in 22 minutes. TED talks are limited to 20 minutes, and Larry adds 10% in order to make his points with emphasis.

Of course you can ask Larry to give a 30-minute keynote, which he also believes works well for a limited time frame. And yes, he speaks for the typical 50-minute keynote as welland very effectively. However, when planning your event, consider the 22-30 minute option. It works.

Navigating Sales: Achieving Unstoppable Performance

What stops many salespeople isn’t lack of skill, education or talent. It’s fear.

Fear of making that next cold call or finally presenting that big prospect they’ve been chasing. Making that next sales call or trying to get an appointment with a big prospect can feel like facing a 30-foot wave in a storm lonely, scary, out of control.

Larry Jacobson knows all about that kind of fear and what it takes to turn it around and achieve the success of your dreams. After 20 years in the sales and marketing world, he spent six years circumnavigating the globe in a sailboat. As a sales expert and adventurer, Larry draws instructive and entertaining parallels between tales of his odyssey at sea and the challenges of selling in our fast-paced business world.

Sales is the driving force of every industry and the lifeblood of every business. Like sailing around the world, successful selling calls for decisiveness, a tolerance for risks, staying positive no matter what, maintaining a laser focus, and a strength and perseverance that come from digging deep inside.

Cultivating these skills is what allowed Larry Jacobson to close millions of dollars in business as well as to complete his circumnavigation fulfilling a childhood dream against all odds.

Larry understands what it takes to close sales in just about any industry, from high-tech to home products. But he also knows that success in sales, just like any endeavor in business or in life, isn’t about knowing tricks of the trade; its about committing to become the best at what you do.

Larry challenges each listener in his audience to do just that: Achieve Unstoppable Performance.

This keynote is the perfect fit for any sales meeting, conference, or incentive program. Your sales people will learn:

  • How setting goals can increase their sales
  • Why taking risks is necessary in sales
  • Why fear is nothing to be afraid of
  • How to keep a good attitude in spite of adversity
  • How important perseverance is to their careers
  • Why objections in sales are good
  • How a “no” brings you one step closer to a “yes”
  • What to do after making a sale

A true sales professional, Larry will inspire your sales team to greater heights.

Making Ideas Happen: Passion, Priorities, and Perseverance

Many people have ideas for their own personal growth and for new ways to accomplish more at their work. Sadly, many ideas never come to fruition because one or more of the following three characteristics are missing.

  1. Passion. No great idea ever happened without dedicated passion. Do you want your idea to happen more than the status quo?
  2. The idea must be made a priority of the originator. And they must make it a company priority. The company must then buy in to the idea. That will put more passion behind it in order to fuel its success.
  3. Most ideas never happen because the person or company doesn’t persevere.

Making an idea happen is not an event, but rather a process. Larry Jacobson had an idea when he was 13 years old that he would sail around the world. It took him 33 years of passion, prioritizing, and perseverance to make that dream come true. And it took an enormous amount of all three of these traits to spend six years sailing his own boat all the way around the world.

This as an area in which Larry Jacobson is indeed an expert, and was the standing ovation topic of Larry’s TEDx talk to a youth group. From 30 to 50 minutes, Larry uses stories, pictures, and makes the subject relevant to the lives of the audience. This talk is a winner!

Redefining Retirement, What’s Your Encore?

Until now, nearly all retirement planning has been fiscal. Once your finances are in order, the question still remains: What will you do with your time in retirement? It’s a much bigger challenge than expected and very few sources address the problem.

Shortly after the euphoria of, “Yahoo! I don’t have to go to work today!” wears off, new retirees often feel:

  • An overall sense of loss Loss of social interaction from fellow employees Lack of purpose
  • Void of fulfillment
  • No longer needed
  • No longer appreciated for their knowledge
  • Suffer from fears about not knowing their next step
  • Disconnected from society
  • Loss of direction
  • Don’t know who to turn to for help with these new challenges they are facing

How do you redefine retirement so it provides you a continued life of fulfillment and purpose? How do you live a balanced life in retirement when you discover that golf and grandkids aren’t enough? As a thought leader in the field of non-financial retirement planning, Larry Jacobson addresses all of these issues and more.

A new study from the American Heart Association shows you have a 56% higher chance of stroke if you cant state your purpose in life during your retirement. Jacobson guides his audiences to find that purpose.

Baby Boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 15 years. They are living 10-30 years longer than their parents and are wondering what to do with their time. Its an unexpected part of life that has not been planned out for them.

Retirees without a plan have a 40% higher probability of falling into clinical depression than non-retirees. Still, only 30% of retirees have a clear plan of what they want in their retirement years and what steps to take in order to make that life a reality. Those with a plan have clarity of their purpose, passions, desires, and skills; and know step by step how to plan a fulfilling retirement. Larry’s audience members leave his presentation with concrete steps to creating their purposeful and joyful retirement plan.

Larry Jacobson Brings Your Audience a Rich Personal Experience After retirement from 20 years as a corporate executive, Larry achieved his own dream of sailing his own boat around the world. Jacobson now is dedicated to helping others redefine their retirement to live a longer and more fulfilled life with purpose. He guides his clients to find their true passion and merge it with their knowledge and wisdom to find a new purpose in life. Jacobson stands out as a work to retirement transition expert. His personal experience and stories of achievement, will engage your audience and provide practical application to their own lives.

Larry Jacobson's 2024 speaking fees

Larry travels from:
  • United States

Specific fees fall within the ranges shown. These are presented as a guide only and are subject to change without notice.

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