Graham Frost (Graham Frost)

I have just published my first book 'Growing Forward', which tells the story of my upbringing in a fundamentalist Christian cult, escape from the cult, brush with homelessness, Borstal sentence and recovery from cancer, all before the age of 23. It's currently available from me in person or from my website www.grahamfrost.com/book An e-book version will soon be available too.

If you are looking for someone to entertain and inspire a large or small audience, I have two keynote speeches that I can deliver all or part of:

'From Borstal to Business - It's Never Too Late To Change Direction' - the title for this speech was suggested by Brad Burton himself, and I have delivered shortened versions of it as 4Sight slots at several 4Networking meetings already and I am happy to travel anywhere within reason to deliver it again!

'Customer Service Culture' - Many businesses say they are customer focused or customer centric, but are they really prepared to make the changes in behaviour that will make those words come to life?

I am now a Quality Assured trainer for the WorldHost 'Principles of Customer Service' workshop through People 1st., the Sector Skills Council for the Hospitality and Leisure industry. More information is available at www.worldhost.uk.com

If your people need training on 21st. century performance management, help to make meetings more productive, or one-to-one coaching to help them achieve their goals, I can offer all of that too.

Please check out my website at www.grahamfrost.com and follow me on twitter www.twitter.com/grafrost

I got involved in training and public speaking completely by accident, really. One day in 1996, I was working away on my train from London to Glasgow - I was the Purser for the railway equivalent of the cabin crew on the Scottish Pullman - when the Chief Executive of the newly-created GNER train company asked if he could speak to me for a minute. He seemed quite an approachable sort of guy, but I had been working for the railway since 1979 and thought that most of the time, when managers wanted to speak to you, you had done something wrong.

Well, it turned out that he wanted to make me aware that they were creating a new training team and he wanted me to apply for one of the positions. At first I was very wary - I had thought that I would continue in my job on the trains until I was 65 and then retire! However, he convinced me to give the job a try and I applied for it - and got it. There followed a three-week intensive train-the-trainer course during which the new team, six of us in all, designed a new induction course based around what we wished we had had when we joined the railway - we had a combination of over sixty years service between us.

I delivered GNER's award-winning induction programme for six years and also got involved with recruitment, management training and sales training. Our Chief Executive, Christopher Garnett, inspired me when he won the Customer Service Leader Award  at the National Customer Service Awards in 1999. I won an internal 'GEM' award in 2002 for my training and support to the front line teams, and in early 2003 chose to take voluntary redundancy as I wanted to see if I could replicate what I had done at GNER elsewhere.

After a couple of months I decided to start my own business, and began Transform Service Training Solutions. In the three years that I ran that business, I ram customer service improvement programmes for Hallmark Healthcare and CWG Countryside Stores as well as re-vamping and delivering Southern Railway's induction programme over a ten-month contract.

In 2006 my family circumstances changed and I went back into a 'proper job' with a large international financial services company as a Learning and Development Consultant. During my period of self-employment I had become involved with Toastmasters International, a worldwide not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping individuals to develop verbal communication and leadership skills, and I remain very involved to this day. www.toastmasters.org

I was in my L&D Consultant role for nearly five years. During that time I promoted and rolled out a training programme that gave front line staff the skills to train their new colleagues 'on the job' and we won a Regional Award in the National Training Awards for that programme. In 2010, the focus of the team I was in changed to being more about manuals and e-learning and less about people, and I was dissatisfied with the way my career was going so decided to set up on my own again.

I have recently been accredited to deliver WorldHost customer service training by People 1st., the sector skills council for the leisure and hospitality industries and I am writing a book based on my life. I am also taking on public speaking gigs, thanks to the development I have received through my membership of Toastmasters International.

Last year I also completed a coaching qualification to add to the Certificate in Training Practice from the CIPD that I achieved in 2003. I am also an Employee Engagement Advisor for The WOW! Awards, the only customer-nominated employee recognition programme in the world.