My guest for this episode is Caspar Berry. Caspar started his working life at the age of 16 as an actor in the BBC drama Byker Grove with “Ant and Dec” before accepting a place at Cambridge University to study economics. He went on to write and direct for television and film but left it all behind at the age of 26 to move to Las Vegas and become a professional poker player. Returning to the UK 3 years later, he built and sold a highly successful production company. He’s presented poker for Sky Sports and was the poker advisor for the James Bond movie Casino Royale in 2006. He’s now a highly sought after advisor to some of the largest organisations in the world speaking on risk and decision making.
I first met Caspar back in 2018 when we were speaking at a conference together. He’s a master storyteller and has a knack for simplifying the complex so I’m delighted to have him on the podcast to share his knowledge.
If you enjoy what you hear please leave a review, like, comment and subscribe. It would mean the world to me and will help this podcast reach as many people as possible.
You don’t want to miss this!
Enjoy! 🙂
00:00 Introduction
05:57 Channel Four film development
09:45 Life-changing audition at Tyne Theatre and Opera
10:35 Loved stage, excelled in economics.
16:48 Success comes from specialisation, focus, dedication and diversity
19:40 Poker in Las Vegas
25:20 Preparation and mentors
29:37 Luck is negligible in the long term
31:46 Leaving poker behind
36:39 Reframing decision-making approaches in corporate settings
39:24 Embracing volatility for gains
44:02 Challenging the idea of risk in business
49:21 Psychology and assessing trust probability
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when you’re playing poker you’re not playing against the house you’re playing the other players around the table and therefore Through The Eyes of an economist that is a market right it’s a perfect Market to this okay luck is a shortterm phenomenon right luck is something which a lot of people talk very breezily about and never really Define and drill down into and if you’re going to talk about it you have to because it’s this luck is your short-term deviation from your long-term expectation as a result of that which you cannot control I have come to the conclusion that one of the worst phrases that people use is it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission when companies say that I think it’s an impediment to people making Brave decisions my guest for this episode is Casper Berry at the age of 16 Casper starred in the BBC drama biker Grove with Anton deck before accepting a place at Cambridge University to study economics he went on to write and direct for TV and film but left it all behind at the age of 26 to move to last Vegas and become a professional poker player returning to the UK 3 years later he then built and sold a highly successful production company he’s presented poker for Sky Sports and was even the poker adviser for the James Bond movie casin Royale he’s now a highly sought-after adviser to some of the largest organizations in the world speaking on risk and decision making I first met Casper back in 2018 when we were speaking at a conference together he’s a master Storyteller and has The Knack for simplifying the complex so I’m delighted to have him on the podcast to share his knowledge if you enjoy what you hear please leave a review like comment and subscribe it will mean the world to me and will help this podcast reach as many people as possible you don’t want to miss this enjoy Casper welcome to the show my first question for you in life what’s the most important thing that you’ve ever had to pitch for oh well not much Street um I uh I’ve never had a job interview um I was very lucky when I was a a film writer I was always just commissioned to write things um I think when I was running my I think when I was running my video production company between the years of 2002 and 20056 we did we had to do some pictures for that uh which were pretty I’ll tell you what I’m going to choose right because you throw this question to me out of the blue I’m going to I’m going to pick something which did change my life a pitch which changed my life okay so here’s what it is the the year is about it’s about 1992 and I got a job doing work experience with a company called key Productions right in Newcastle which was a small corporate production company and they got this um brief for a job which they should never have receiv received right because they were really small scale doing like 10 12,000 corporate videos and it was to produce this big sixf figure film for Harley Paul Marina right to have to to to be a sort of you know huge you know um tourist attraction for Harley pul Marina and I remember we got this brief and Richard JNS who became you know friend of mine to this day 30 years later said uh um have we got anything for this and I went away and wrote a story right they do they weren’t necessarily asking for a drama but I went and wrote a story about a guy who was press ganged into the Navy in 1812 or whatever it was and um we were selected and we had to pitch for it and the guys coming out were seven men in armman suits from the corporate end of Yorkshire television and then me and Richard walked in and anyway we got the job and it was off the back of that that Richard asked me to write a feature film which was produced by film 4 and although I don’t work in the film industry these days really that pit the passion that I had for that story um the authenticity I guess and the Simplicity it did it changed my life that’s amazing I I love how it it’s normally you know one little drop in the ocean that has all of these ripples that you you pitch literally in the ocean for harol Marina but but you pitch for something like that and that leads to feature film I mean like when that brief landed and I’m I’m assuming it’s probably you know a days of early email but you know when that email came through the the thought of oh yes this will lead to a feature film couldn’t have been you know further from anyone’s mind may it wasn’t it wasn’t even early email it would have been 1991 so I was 18 it was in my year out between school and University so I was 18 at the time see because Richard bless him he took me under his wing I was directing TV commercials within three months of that at the age of 18 there was no email um it was just this we we still don’t know why key production got it’s probably a fact I think it was a fact we have no idea why key production got in but I mean your point is absolutely right like so you know I talk about butterflies right the butterfly effect and so for me that’s what this is It’s a butterfly it’s just like this thing as you say I would have had no idea what it would have led to now I did leave the film industry in in 1999 when I became a professional poke player so it didn’t change my life in that respect but it did change that whole decade for me Shaped that decade and um and in many ways it did shape my life but in a more Securus way H fascinating so if if that’s the kind of the thing that kicked off that part of your career are there are there any pictures or you know experiences in in life that you thought ah that like that slipped through my fingers I’d have I’d have loved to have had that opportunity um and seeing where that took me yeah there’s a lot of those um um one that Springs to mind is um what year would this have been about 1994 maybe five uh channel four so so I I I I had this film um being made by by film 4 they everyone knew that was in development um and uh so a different part of Channel 4 asked me to pitch uh to direct um a 10-minute short film which again I was only um 21 at the time you everyone else was sort of in their 30s and uh well the first story is that they didn’t get hold of me by the deadline the first year 1993 or two they didn’t get hold of me by the deadline and I didn’t get a chance to direct to to pitch and that was heartbreaking because it was like it was before email do you know what I mean I actually I think maybe the next year I I was one of the first students to get a mobile phone you remember the the old Sony Mars Bars yeah cost like about 60 good a month or something I had to bike and Grove money and but it was before that and so how did you get hold of people like when students were in the halls or we were living in a house without a domestic phone like how did they even think that they could get hold of me so I was so heartbroken but then the next year I got to pitch and I didn’t get it and um I was probably more heartbroken cuz I just I remember thinking like there are so few opportunities like this which there were then so few and not getting it I just thought was um I wasn’t going to I felt like i’ missed a boat and in some ways probably I I still do like I did like I did like my life might have been different if I’d got that interesting though because you you know you you walk down One path and by by choosing that path you can’t walk down the other um which is the the conundrum that we’re all in yeah yeah yeah you know your podcast is called like a pitch and you’re starting off asking pitch questions and it’s so interesting because I’m not just saying this to be on brand pitches really really can change your life getting them and not getting them and sometimes by the way not getting them change it for the better like you were you you know you you dodged a bullet sort of thing you know um there are lots of ways in which there are lots of reasons I wish I hadn’t got that part in biker Grove in 1989 and there are lots of reasons why I wish that Channel 4 hadn’t made my feature film in 1996 Lots um but still the getting the moment that you get that thing as a result of that pitch and it changes everything it’s so profound so take us back a little bit because you’ve you’ve alluded to a couple of things there that I think are interesting you you’ve had a really but you’ve had you’ve had a very varied career you know from acting to to writing and directing building and selling production companies becoming a professional poker player and now speaking on risk and decision- making with some of the biggest corporations in the world but where does that story start can you take me back to to Casper you know at five 10 years old what did you want to be so um uh I mean you asked the question five 10 years old we’ll be here for an hour now I I was a really weird kid uh so first of all I was very shy until the age of 10 like really shy and and didn’t mix well in groups I mean I was okay in school but I remember I tried to join non-school groups in essic and I was quite Posh and Essex kids didn’t really like that uh and then at the age of 10 we moved to Newcastle was the first thing and there was this um theater called the time theater and Opera House in Newcastle which is still today a unique thing because it’s a stunning Victorian opera house which is which is effectively owned and run by amateurs and they had this they had this teen theater school and at the age of 10 I auditioned for it and then and two months later they put on biker grow they put on Bugsy Malone and I got the part of Bugsy right so again that was an audition that I pitched but that completely changed my life because um first of all like all the girls noticed me for the first time and um secondly like I just I was somebody like I was doing something where people were looking at me and I and I gathered that although I didn’t like them looking at me after the whatever it was had finished and still don’t I really enjoyed that moment on the stage I really enjoyed that like it allowed me to be or do something and then I could stop being it or doing it which by the way is where I have a problem now in 2024 because I don’t want to do Twitter or Instagram or I don’t even want to book or you know I don’t want to be in constant contact with people but I love the hour on the stage right so that completely changed my life getting that part and then throughout my um 10 11 12 into my teens was really weird because I had all this like theater stuff going on and all I wanted to be was an economist and the really weird thing was I hadn’t done economics at that point right you couldn’t do economics in my skill school till GCSE and then when I started doing economics I had this extraordinary natural gift for it like it’s the only academic subject that I was really profoundly innately good at and ended up doing that at Cambridge University that’s how good I was but like my parents all thought there was something wrong with me like he’s he’s Bugsy and bugs him alone and he wants to be an economist why I do that and I still don’t know to this day and actually when I said sort of throw away like maybe that film I wish it hadn’t happened in some way I wish that it hadn’t right and I’ll tell you why we’re trying to capture a lot of things here but what happened was at a very young age I was all of these things happened for me at a very young age I got M Grove when I was 16 and this feature film was made when I was still at University and I didn’t really know how the world worked right I just you know things had fallen into these opportunities and everyone was saying well you really good at this and this will happen and then when all that run finished let’s say 1997 and I had to go to Soho and Pitch new film ideas like I didn’t know how to do that oh I’ve just said the word pitch I really wasn’t saying that because this is a a podcast about pitches but it’s really significant that I didn’t I hadn’t pitched that film Richard just asked me to write it and yeah and you know and so then literally when when I got into that situation of going what’s your idea and let’s write a treatment and do the I I didn’t have a clue how any of it worked I didn’t have a clue how money worked or contracts work it still all terrifies me to this day and I had this moment in 2008 I was in Shanghai uh having a really great time um playing pool in this private pool Club in Shanghai and I got talked to this Banker uh no not a banker he’s just a guy a finance guy in Shanghai and he was in his mid sort of 20s and he studied economics at Cambridge and and then got done Finance in Shanghai and said not not everyone does but he said he was going to retire at 30 and then decided what he want to do with his life and he would have had like 10 million crit in the bank at that point and I just remember thinking should have done that because because what I got from that is an idea about how the world worked right quite a lot of you know Bankers bonuses and uh an understanding of money and all sorts of things which I didn’t understand throughout my 20s and then I could have decided what I wanted to do with my life and um who knows what I’d have decided to do but I’d have done it all with much more of a basis I think than I ever had interesting I mean that that if I if I look at your career and and your life Journey from an out side perspective it’s it’s incredibly exciting like I I’m really curious as to how you leave the world of writing and and directing behind and go I’m I’m going off to Las Vegas to become a professional poker player and interestingly as someone who just said I don’t really know very much about money but studied economics at Cambridge University like taught me through to anyone that’s listening that’s about to embark on a an economics degree at Cambridge be beware you’re not going to learn much about money yeah you’re not going to learn anything about money I can tell you that you could learn why certain models don’t work or not even that they often they don’t know um so well look I as you know I’m very lucky now to be a speaker as you said in the introduction to speak to you know uh very senior people in the world’s biggest companies and it’s it’s a real privilege but as part of that again as I’m sure you appreciate um there’s a Q&A in which they ask you questions about your life like why did you choose to be a professional poke player why did you stop being a professional Pok player and I’m always very wary because I do I’m I’m I’m painfully honest I think sometimes about rewriting history um and I’m always very wary about uh answering those questions in such a way that makes it look like there was some sort of big plan behind it and um there wasn’t at all uh I was when I went to play poker I specifically said to my agent at the time I remember vividly saying I want to be a leaf on the breeze for a bit okay because all those things had happened for me so quickly in my life that I hadn’t gone traveling do you know what I mean and I hadn’t um experienced Serendipity and oh I’ve met this bloke in a pub and he does this and you know um I hadn’t I hadn’t lived like that I’d lived in a very very focused way from the age of 16 from from the first um from my first scene doing biker Grove we both had that experience of acting on film and television and it’s very seductive it’s very exciting and I felt like the Finger of God came down this is honestly true it sounds pretentious and pointed to the director and where that’s what you want to do with your life right and so for the next 10 years I dedicated myself to doing that until I got to 25 26 and was like I don’t think this is what I want to do with my life um what do I want to do I don’t know so let’s let just try some things which now we you know we might call taking a risk okay um although I don’t Advocate that people in my sessions take risks in this way but sometimes it’s good to do something different and to explore the unknown in a way where there’s no plan behind it and in fact one of the things I’m very passionate about on the rare occasions when someone is foolish enough to ask me for advice is when we back with engineer success it is always the product of specialization because success comes from focus and dedication and you know pushing the envelopes and being better than other people um and talents and all those good things but it usually comes as a result of having found what it was that you wanted to do in the first place and I don’t think enough has talked about that in life of trying to do different things so a good book was written about it about four or five years ago wasn’t it range which is about how a lot of good people you know find that thing that they that they good at by accident as a as a as a result of just diversifying there’s lots of good reasons why the human brain is actually wired to diversify first before it specializes um that’s that’s what being young is about and that’s not a bad thing um so yeah that’s really why I went to play poker was I just wanted to try some some different stuff and then I stopped playing poker because I was never going to do it forever and I had to get back to life and the real world and come back and I set up a company and then realized I didn’t think I was a very good entrepreneur at all but I had enjoyed the days when I was teaching my team and training them um and a couple of days when I was uh networking and doing presentations and I thought I would like to give that a try I didn’t even know what a corporate speaker was because I’d never worked in a company so I’d never experienced a corporate speaker i’ never sat in an audience but that did coincide with someone recommended that I do this thing called Tony Robbins in the London dockland so that was my first experience of a speaker learning from the best yeah and um and that was that was how I embarked on that final what has become the final chapter of my life because I’m still doing it now 20 years later sorry to interrupt but before we continue with the episode I’ve got a favor to ask I’m on a mission to get this podcast in the hands of as many people as possible so if you found what you’ve heard so far valuable please please please like comment rate and subscribe these things make a huge difference to our reach and if you’re open to it if you happen to know just one person someone who just like you would benefit from listening to these conversations then please share the podcast with them let’s get on with it so so if we if we think about that time in Las Vegas you know there seems like there was a relatively uh large amount of unknown you you were stepping into a space that you weren’t particularly familiar with I’m assuming that you’d played poker before and it wasn’t you literally landing on the tables without having done it so how how did you go about you know building that new skill set and and how did you develop I think probably more importantly in that environment the mindset of a a professional poker player I mean one word basically reading you know don’t want to sound like Warren Buffett or your dad but um I uh played poker in the summer of 1999 um so in fact my my my best buddy uh at the time and now a guy called Nick wall who was on my Corridor at University um he actually let’s just do the whole butterfly story right he loved Muhammad Ali and so he wanted to go to Las Vegas to see Caesar’s Palace all right so when we graduated from University with from on my part no interest or um experience in gambling at all in the summer of 1996 we went to Las Vegas and we happened to read this book on the plane which I still got and bless it I do owe it everything because it explained pretty much what I teach now which is the concept of expectation and it was called how to win at casino gambling and the first sentence is you won’t win at casino gambling right what it taught you was what it taught you was that you so every bet that you place in a casino has an expectation um which is negative because you’re playing against the house right so at all of these games you will lose but at some games you’ll lose less than others which is the aim of casino gambling which is to buy as much fun as possible right so to lose as slowly as possible so play these games craps blackjack basic strategy etc etc and I love that and I got it because that was pure economics and then in the summer of 99 if you really want the proper story I’m very rely tell this so you’re very privileged we went to Las Vegas and we went we went to a bar called the Voodoo Lounge which is in the Rio Hotel and it’s beautiful it has a outside view of the whole strip which in the summer it’s gorgeous and they used to do this cocktail called sorry what the witch doctor ordered which was this fish bowl with dry ice bubbling this whole cocktail which is supposed to be like for a group of six but I ordered it and he didn’t want any so I drank it all long story short I had alcohol poisoning I was in bed for three days so he didn’t have anyone to um to play blackjack with right so he was like wandering around lost he was really interested in poker because late night poker just happened right on on channel 4th his 1999 and so he um he went into the poker room and then he would come up to the room and I was being sick off the edge of the bed and he would say this is amazing this thing is amazing um you you got to try it and I was like yeah we’ll try it the room and um at the end of those three days genuinely we went downstairs and I watched him play for about three or four hours and then I started playing and it was absolutely gripping and I said to him on the plane home I said I’m going to do that I think and he said would you be I said I’m going to I’m going to try doing that professionally because I’d understood that and for the benefit of people who haven’t seen me and don’t know okay very important when you’re playing poker you’re not playing against the house okay so everything else that you do in the casino you have this Negative Edge embedded against you you will lose money in the long run you can win on any given evening when you’re playing poker you’re playing the other players around the table and therefore Through The Eyes of an economist that is a market right it’s a perfect Market okay and therefore you can get the edge yourself and therefore poker is the opportunity to make a profit in the casino okay and I thought I’m going to do that he said you’re mad I said and I said not forever not not forever but like six months let let’s try doing that I want to be a leaf on the breeze so I read 30 books um in England I was living in Wales at the time in Britain I was living in Wales at the time and um and then I went out on the 5th of January the year 2000 and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done because with poker it doesn’t matter how much Theory you know executing in the moment is just as hard as knowing everything um but I Rose to the challenge really and it was a challenge but that was part of the point of doing it that’s a long story isn’t it sorry no it’s fascinating is it I mean is there a community is there in so many things you know when when I’m when I look at my life and the things that I’ve achieved success in it’s that there’s normally been the Yoda figure involved there’s a there’s a mentor there’s someone that kind of guides you or challenges you Um poker seems to be very kind of insular it’s you know I don’t know what I’m talking about but it’s all about visors and you know not not making eye cont so did you find a community and people that were generous in in helping you succeed so uh I was always I’ve always been aware of the fact that I didn’t um uh join the poker Community right and um and I’ve I’ve always been sort of aware that that was that was probably a downside listen I didn’t join for two reasons I’m a lone wolf I don’t like politics and the poker Community now and even then has this extraordinary amount of boring politics um and and it’s actually quite hard to sit on a table with someone who you like and it’s hard to take their money it’s even harder to lose it to them um so I didn’t like all of that right I saw a tweet the other day so it’s it wasn’t revelatory but just reading it in in on on this on Twitter just made me go oh God yeah and it said the most successful poker players are last 30 years have all been people who had a support Community around them and it’s so true so the closest I had to that was this guy my buddy Nick wall still commentator on poker TV shows he quit his job and came and joined me and so we would you just said the words there we would be each other’s community and we would you know push each other and the more thinking and talking you do away from the poker table the better you are in the the Heat of the Moment it’s like think of flying a plane right you drill all the things that can happen so you hope they don’t but when they do you’re ready for them because you’ve drilled them right and then you said a really magic word uh about three minutes ago which was Mentor you know to have a good poker Mentor uh will make all the difference it I think in many ways for a long time recently now the knowledge is so exposed it’s such a perfect Market that it’s probably less relevant but there was a period of time where if you didn’t have access to some of the ideas that made the difference between great players and and good players uh you you just weren’t going to make that leap at all um and maybe that is still relevant I you know I don’t play at the highest limits anymore but but there’s so the knowledge has become so much more open and exposed now and the underlying mechanics to creating the knowledge I.E mathematics is so much more well-known now so I think it’s harder to have secret winning strategies now but poker has changed so much in those 20 years yeah fascinating I mean all of these things have evolve don’t they but it it’s it it seems like it’s it’s finite you know there are only so many cards in a deck of cards and there are only so many combinations that you can that you can play but but actually there’s the idea that it’s it’s luck or that it’s gambling it’s not it’s probably it seems to be problem solving and that’s what I’m hearing it’s all problem solving and let me just let me just throw a few figures at you so the first of all is there’s two and a half half million possible Five Card hand combinations okay so although it’s very bounded it’s quite a lot now as I always say if that sounds like a lot you know try life okay a lot more um you’re right there’s only 52 cars but I’m sure you know the 52 factorial fact do you know that the 52 factorial fact it’s an incredible thing so 52 factorial is the number of different possible combinations there can be of those 52 cards right and uh you you just need you need to go work at 52 factoral because what it is it’s 52 * 51 * 50 * 49 * 48 and it’s a number so incredibly large there will never if you shuffle a deck of cards that will be the first time in the universe that the cards have ever been shuffled in that way if 52 factor is this big if you take a if you stand on the on the coast of Ireland the west coast of Ireland right and you take a step and then wait a billion years right and you’re counting every second and then take another step and wait a billion years and step all around the world whilst waiting a billion years with every step and when you get back to the West Coast of iseland take a piece of paper right and put it down on the ground and then set off again taking a step every two billion years counting okay you won’t get to 52 factorial until that parlor paper reaches the moon that’s a that’s a mic drop moment I’ve got no got nothing to come back with that that’s just blow my mind those are the few things there but let’s let’s just talk about luck very quickly because you mentioned it and if we’re going to talk about you know poker and just the Dynamics of it Luck’s a really important thing and it’s important to remember something which I said in my presentations which is this luck is a short-term phenomenon right luck is something which a lot of people talk very breezly about and never really Define and drill down into and if you’re going to talk about it you have to because it’s this luck is your short-term deviation from your long-term expectation as a result of that which you cannot control so let me just let me just expound upon that your long-term expectations what I talk about before in the casino in the long run you will lose in the casino because your expectation is negative can you win over any given spin of the wheel or turn of the card or evening sometimes a whole trip to Vegas Yes uh outliers and anomalies are people who win Beyond uh the law of large what the law of large numbers dictates okay because broadly speaking um you are going to approximate your expectation in the long run of ever anything all right in fact the long run the definition of the long run is the period of time over which the luck has even out right because if you and I were to toss a coin 10 times and I won eight and you w two I wouldn’t be a better coin tosser than you I just have been lucky over that period of time yeah I might even still be up or you’d be up over a thousand coin tosses but over half a million over a million coin tosses what’s interesting is the actual difference will become greater but the proportionate difference becomes less okay and therefore the difference between us as a result of that which we cannot control the toss of a coin has basically become negligible and that’s what luck is now come back to my very first point about these numbers the medium term the long term in life is almost certainly arguably longer than any lifetime what that means is that some people will die having been luckier than other people okay because their child got leukemia or they won the lottery or let’s just be humble for a moment they were born in the West in the 20th century mean we were all incredibly lucky uh more than most animals and humans who’ve ever lived but that’s what luck is it’s our short-term deviation uh compared to a long-term expectation and in poker you hit the longterm over a period of time it gets longer and longer for reasons which I won’t bore you with but in my period when I was playing it was about four months of play and over that period of time you were basically paid according to the quality of decisions that you made and I love that about it because look at a poker table from the outside and go oh that’s a game of luck it’s actually a perfect meritocracy that’s fascinating so so what what made you go okay I’ve done that now I’m gonna come back to the UK and build a production company so I get that question a lot obviously it’s a very good question and um sometimes I say this in answer to it I go I’m gonna answer that question but I’m gonna lie um the reason I say that is because there there are three answers to that question right one of the answers is I just did right the other answer will take as long to explain to you as it took me to decide which is about six months because life is really complicated and if we talk about the butterflies and the nuances like sometimes you get up in the morning you go I’m not going to stop playing poker and sometimes you get up in the morning go God PO is the last thing I want to do today you feel differently about different times and different things pull you in different directions right and there was never a moment for me where I went oh God you know I’ve just lost a million dollars I’m going to stop playing poke I wasn’t playing for that much money B so that didn’t happen but broadly speaking the LIE is what I Whittle it down to is three things number one I was never going to be world champion right I was not naturally a great poker player I worked very hard and it was the hardest I ever worked in some ways for every dollar that I made secondly it become boring right I hope there are people amongst you who’ve played or do play or um might play in the future and I hope they really enjoy it but if you can imagine going to the same table usually in the Mirage hotel casino every day for 10 hours a day six days a week it becomes really monotonous and then the final reason was genuinely I split up with my girlfriend and I’m like now’s a good time to leave town you know it just all it just all made sense I was very happy to stop at that time yeah so so you you came back and you you built a business which you then went on and sold and as you said you’d had no kind of previous experience of of doing that what what has taking that leap and you know going through the highs and lows taught you about what you do now the the the running the business what did the running the business teach me about speaking um it’s a good question uh well I guess so to put it in context like all I’d done before playing poker was film and TV and directing TV commercials and writing and that kind of thing and then there was poker which was very odd and unique and then I guess since poker my life I think your life as well is very much about the market do you what I mean we we have to appeal to the market so there’s something about you know acting writing which is about Talent you know and about honing your craft and then speaking which is also craft uh but you know selling corporate films and and speaking which is about you know you have to you have to appeal to the market and that could be quite brutal and in both those jobs it’s where the power of the pitch comes in because it’s it’s not just about how good you are it’s about how good people perceive you to be and how different they perceive you to be to other people selling quality it’s one of the hardest things you could do because they don’t know they don’t know until they get the feedback from the first group that do it and if you’re a speaker that’s the only group that do it very often um so uh yeah it’s about how do you how do you convince people that you’re good and I the reason why I hesitated I think answering this question is because I don’t think I’m great at it and I probably because I don’t like doing it like I want a world where I only get the jobs that I’m right for because as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you sometimes as a speaker you just w the right person me you can feel it five minutes in you just go this this is not their key message this is doesn’t work um but I but I feel like I want all of those jobs I want all the jobs that I’m right for and none of the jobs that I’m wrong for and I just want the world to be a very fair place I’ve always offered Dominic and so both those things um the video production and the speaking I’ve offered people 100% money back if they’re not satisfied I’ve always done that it’s most natural thing in the world for me because I’m like if I don’t do a great job uh according to what you want I don’t want to be paid that’s always been my just person it’s not it’s not a it’s not a um sales line it’s not like John Lewis will with fund the difference or not to get people through the door it’s like I genuinely don’t want the money if you don’t feel that I did a great job um and that’s that’s me going like I don’t want this I don’t want to benefit from this job if I’m not really good at it but if I am really good at it I want to be well paid for it um having seen you on stage you are really good at it so when you’re when you’re engaging with you know a corporate audience many people who are going listening to this will be work working within large organizations and and having to deal with risk and decision- making on a on a daily basis so what are some of the kind of key things that you see people getting wrong um and and you know what what do you advise people to do as a as a starting point to assess their um quality of decision making okay I’m gonna ask a slightly different question which I decided before you through that last sentence and and I’ll tell you why because I’m not I I talk very as you you know you seen me I I have never worked for a corporation okay um so when I first started I was talking very abstractly about decision making and I still talk more abstractly than your average speaker okay but it’s become more and more practical based on having worked with a lot of people who work in corporate settings okay and so what I decided to say before you threw that last sentence in which was about you know what they should think about in the moment of decision was how do you make decisions in a corporate setting okay and I have come to the conclusion that one of the worst phrases that people use and I do not know why it’s become so popular is it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission um now it’s probably easier in theory right to go I’ve I’ve done this I’m sorry uh than it is to go can we do this and probably right but the point is most people don’t don’t buy that there’s going to be no consequences of having done the thing for which they need to ask the Forgiveness right so when companies say that I think it’s an impediment to people making Brave decisions because it’s not giving them the most important tools that I think I’ve identified in this 20-year Journey which is that what you need to create when making decisions in a corporate context is alignment all right now here’s what I mean by that I might complicate this matter a little bit I’m going to go around the houses a bit but companies publicly listed companies actually have a legal duty to maximize shareholder value okay that is really problematic because the extent to which we maximize shareholder value is contingent upon uh a variable which is precisely what I talk about which is how much risk do you want to take also time right if you give me the latitude to take loads of risk and 10 years I will create a greater return for you per year than if you say I must do something without any fail uh in two months time right yeah my return per unit of time will be greater in the first scenario than the second scenario that’s why Warren Buffett buffit makes 17 to 25% returns and he says to his shareholders every year at the annual meeting don’t buy shares in bar half away that you don’t want to give to your grandchildren right because what he’s saying is don’t don’t come to these meetings and judge me about you know the stock performance of something that I bought six months ago it’s completely uninteresting to me right I’ve bought this stock because it’s 25 year returns are going to be solid and they usually are acknowledge when he’s made mistakes so what I mean by that is that therefore what you need to do when you make decisions in a corporate context is to create per is to ask for permission right and information about the the latitude that they that we have to to make mistakes and errors and fail and what I called negative feedback and negative metrics in the short term right over what period of time am I going to be judged in this endeavor and what is it okay to lose in the short term in order to achieve that a lot of a lot of what I talk about in in um uh Theory will boil down to this concept which is how much you prepared to lose in the short term in order to gain in the long term because the greater amount that that is by which I mean the greater volatility that you’re prepared to embrace if you were a share Trader you talk about volatility the greater greater volatility you’re prepared to embrace the higher rewards you’re going to get that’s the essence of high risk High reward so this idea of asking for per forgiveness afterwards is an impediment because people go oh no what if I ask for forgiveness and they say no yeah that’s not a great corporate culture what you should be in inculcating in people is the act of asking for permission and the act of creating alignment around the amount of risk that we all think is acceptable for us to take and and giving people doesn’t mean that that alignment is going to be great giving people greater and greater latitude sorry not alignment giving people greater and greater latitude over time as they earn trust uh is the key to them feeling confident and happy in making decisions which will get greater long-term returns and do you think that those same principles apply you know in in our lives as well you know if we if we we’re starting our journey um at 18 19 that we are because we have that you know that long-term view that you know being married and kids and pensions and everything seems so far off that you’re kind of maybe more open to taking risks in those early years and then as as Things become more finite and the confines uh increase that we become more risk adverse well let’s let’s come right back brilliant link well done uh to to my life story what I was doing there was something quite different every two and a half years because in that acting period there was actually there was there was the acting and then there was the TV commercials and then there was the screenwriting um and then there was the running the production company you know then there was poker and I was doing something different every two and a half years some people say to me you’re telling us all to take risk uh you haven’t taken risk in the last 20 years you’re still a speaker and I say this you do not why would you take risk right what is a risk a risk is an opportunity with a greater potential for loss than the than the otherwise safer decision okay okay so there must be a reason for taking that risk which is a greater potential for gain now I talk about return on investment and profit and stuff like that because we spend a lot of our time in the corporate world but of course a lot of those upsides are intangible jumping out of an airplane will give you a rush of adrenaline and dopamine and all those things it’s not going to make any extra profit all right and if you want those things then you are embracing the actually very small risk of injury of jumping out of an airplane okay but it’s the same thing in a company it’s the same thing with your life for me I love speaking you know Dominic as as well as anyone better than most that I have a slightly complicated relationship with it in terms of what do I want on that upside and what price I’m prepared to pay for that and it’s been a a bit of a wrestle with me for the last six years in terms of answering those questions but I love speaking enough to not to want to try and do other things because I don’t need to I don’t want any more upside than speaking is given me which is I’ve seen the world you know I’ve earned good money um I’ve get two applauses a week and the rest of my but the rest of my life is my own do to me and for a lone wolf like me that’s absolutely perfect why on Earth would I throw that away but one of the problems uh and I’ve Diversified and tried other things and I’ve had that range and I’ve found that thing and I’ve focused on it and I’ve and I’ve um hopefully not perfected it but you know I’ve become good at it great the problem comes when you’re a company all right because of this obligation to maximize shareholder value because companies aren’t allowed to stand still they aren’t allowed to go that’s us 20 years we’re completely happy that’s fine and so risk comes becomes important to companies and I’m going to say this phrase which will offend some people whether they know it and understand it or not uh because that’s the obligation on the company and the reason I say whether they know it or understand it or not is I will very often present my stuff to people who go oh yeah that’s that doesn’t really work for our company they’re very risk averse and it’s like yeah but money left under the mattress gets no return like you only get any of your return because you take risk it’s just that most of them you take for granted Ed because they become part of operations right but but what we look at growth and Innovation and new opportunities as being more risky because it’s not the thing that we do every day but actually what we do every day is also uh implicitly risk taking that’s how returns are generated now if I if I think back to what you were saying about poker then part of part of taking a risk is that I think there’s a there’s a phrase count calculated risk but I might rephrase that as educated risk so you were talking about educating yourself about the you know the ins and outs of the the mathematics behind the poker um table and if we if we map that across into a pitching scenario if I’ve got an idea that I want to pitch there’s there’s an inherent risk to me there of of going out and making a fool of myself or or of chucking a load of at something that never becomes a thing so in order to minimize the the risk in those situations is it is it about increasing our knowledge and and our understanding of our audience of what we’re offering of of of seeing all of those parameters like what should we be doing well good question I think there’s a lot to unpack there the first thing is you’ve you’ve um drawn a comparison between risk- taking and pitching which is I talk about like most weeks my life and I haven’t done until this point in this um this podcast so let’s do this now I think that one of the biggest risks that people can take in corporate situations is that right is the smallest scale pitch is I’ve got an idea I’ve got something to say uh even bigger risks when it’s I don’t like that or I disagree with you do you know what I mean or I think we could be doing this different and better right yeah th those are those are that lowest level of personal interaction of risk in terms of personal interaction of of of coming back on something of suggesting something new I think of the absolute building blocks um that will Define risk- taking Innovative companies versus their their competitors right and and I’m sure you’re aware of this phrase but it’s really worth bringing into the conversation the idea of creating cultivating psychological safety in a corporate culture is one has become a buzzword I do think is one of the most important things that we can do you know the pixars the apples of this world have cultures based on that idea that people feel that they can speak up basically um and so that’s that’s really important with your calculated versus educated so um I’m going a bit of a pedant here sort of have to be yeah because it’s sort of like mind demure really so um people say is poker uh game of maths or psychology right the answer is it’s both okay the maths is fundamental and most poker players in 2024 and some in 20 4 thank God because I was one of them so I had an edge well actually most of the time try and do a calculation which is the origin of the phrase the calculated risk right which can be defined I can show it to you as you know in my presentations I do actually put it on a screen and some people hate it right no math and I get that but I put it on for a number of reasons a because it gives this logical balance to what I’m talking about that goes beyond metaphorical stories and B because it shows what people are doing subconsciously most of the time right here’s what I mean by that math is very often a codification of subconscious processes so 80,000 years ago we would have known that when a baby was born we had to go and hunt for more meat right that’s long division all right but there was no concept of long division there so so we have the math of risk and reward which was given to us by ferat and Pascal which is a codification of what we’re all doing all the time Dominic I’ve got this business that I’d like you to invest in are you interested say no no no Richard Branson’s uh in are you in yes of course of course now why well because what’s happened is your probability assessment right that this is actually a good idea has gone up right now you didn’t use probability you didn’t go it’s gone from 32% to 48.9% right but that’s the math side of it but that’s codifying what you’ve done subconsciously if I said it could be illegal now you’re probably backing away right because the likelihood of this new downside has come in um which is all part of this calculation right now the education is the idea that Branson’s a good businessman and that you don’t want to go to prison and what are the laws in the country and what’s the likelihood that he’s got the flush and if people take a drink halfway through the hand are they more likely to be bluffing or not bluffing that’s all the education right that’s where poker is again with psychology because the psychology is what we call is educated in your assessment or what we call judgment which is the probability your judgment of this person that you trust them based on 48 years of of uh knowing people right is effectively you saying I trust them more than this person that there is a higher likelihood that this person will deliver on time and on budget than this person there’s a higher likelihood that this person’s telling the truth okay you didn’t do a calculation at that point but what I guess what I’m trying to say in my presentations a lot of time is don’t leave this room and get out your advocus that’s not what I’m asking you to do but what I am asking you to do is to understand that you do have a mental advocus right and that what you should be trying to do is arrest control over that okay so that it isn’t controlling you all right and that it may be the case that when you put your hand up or when you pitch that someone says no all right and if they bring someone like you in they’ll have a higher chance of getting a yes right that’s what education about but calculation is about going yeah but even if I get eight NOS if I get one yes and get my way on this that’s worth those eight NOS particularly since for this very specific context eight nodes of rejection probably didn’t cost you anything but even in situations where it does cost you something we can construct scenarios where one yes is worth 800 NOS by the way I I love that I mean yeah it thinking about it in that way does change everything and and it is all about that mental Abacus I’ve never I’ve never thought about that before so amazing um Casper I I could geek out on this stuff all day you you’ve really kind of captured my imagination but I’m going to bring things to a close um final question for you if you could go back and give uh that that young man in Bugsy Malone uh one one bit of advice what would you give him when you’re 14 you’re going to go to the cinema uh on westg road with a girl called Tonia Cade and uh you’re going to watch Police Academy 2 piss [Laughter] her I love it Casper thank you so much for joining me on the podcast take care man thanks for listening to the wildlife’s a pitch podcast if you’d like to improve the way you pitch and communicate I’m giving away a special gift to all my listeners we’ve developed the pitching with impact scorecard to help you Benchmark your pitch performance in six key areas it’ll take you less than 5 minutes to complete and you’ll receive a detailed personalized report packed full of insights and ideas to help you improve and grow just head over to Dominic keno.com scorecard to get started
1 Comment
Didn't realise when I was teaching you that Bugsy Malone was so pivotal!