[Music] [Music] the little gr box that's Stuart Stu hi I am so glad to be here with you and uh okay if we stand because it feels awkward to do a Sit yes I don't like to sit down that's not in my roomate at all and thank you before we begin for putting me through the exquisitely vulnerable experience of standing back there whilst an entire room full of people watched me do comedy that I had no control over anymore well I'm so glad to be here with you I'm glad to be here with you my
climate leaders um many of us who think we are also comedians uh regardless we need all the help we can get so Stu what do you got for us well thank you um I think that's an interesting point the idea of you needing all the help you can get because in comedy we say the problems are the material that's where all the comedians material comes from you have a problem in your life a problem in society a political or environmental problem and you pour over it and you try and crack into it and that's where
you find the funny stuff so the problems are the material and as a climate comedian uh what a relief because there are so many problems there are so many problems and so I have this infinite amount of material to work with as I'm sort of processing my own climate dread that's where the show originated from was a few years ago realizing that I couldn't think about or I couldn't write about anything El else and wanting to transmit that to other people and then recognizing that maybe there was a need for it or a desire for
it because I know that working in climate many of you will swing wildly between hope and then despair on a day-to-day basis feeling completely burnt out feeling as challenged as I do when you come across a new uh a new fact or a conversation here spark something when you realize oh this compostable cup it's not all that compostable under the UN Let It Go as a special process I don't want to know that you know and you can you can feel really negative about it you can feel really upset but the problems are the material
so that's that's the bread and butter to me and also what it means is that when I take I do a I do the show and as some of you can come and see tonight not all of you there won't be enough room but do uh line up as as swiftly as you can but also I uh I have a kind a version of it that I offer to businesses where I kind of brief with the CSR leader the CSO and uh I kind of work out what messaging they are they've been saying so long
that no one's hearing it anymore um and I say to them I say to them what would you say to your CEO if you could sort of slap them against the face I'll try and make that funny and I'll try and weave it in and then I'll come and do an event for you and then you can put that in front of them and say see we all saw you laugh at that guy and now you know this stuff and uh and whenever I've said that to people here at greenbiz I've heard the sentence Oh
we need that and that is not a sentence that comedians ever hear so I'm very very pleased to be here and I and I know that comedy is about connection like you've already connected with this audience right in two minutes um and how are you doing that kind of connection on a hard topic like the climate crisis so Connection in comedy I think is it's a connection with your audience and that connection uh is brought about through being authentic I think in order to be authentic you need to make yourself vulnerable you need to you
need to genuinely make yourself vulnerable you need to you need to sort of uh uh have genuine risk to what you're saying you know I wish I'd known as a child I wish someone had said to me oh if you want to they should give this lesson in schools they say if you want people to like you tell a story where you fail I wish I'd heard that earlier in my life I thought you had to boast about your achievements I mean I'm I realize I'm an America now you may have a different approach but
in certainly in the UK and I think this is universal if you can say to someone honestly I'm struggling with this I don't know what to do about that I'm challenged by this I'm really worried about that then you can you can make through through taking that risk you can make an authentic connection with people and you can communicate with them authentically and I think that's so important to get people to understand your messaging whether it's internal coms or whether it's your messaging to your consumers whoever it is or the people above you whoever if
you can say what you really mean with an authentic voice and it's it helps you have to be personal you have to be specific um that joke there in the in the business class joke about Metal Cutlery I said metal Cutlery because obviously terrorists can't afford business class people laugh at that because if you have been a business class traveler you'll know you get metal Cutlery and you probably noticed that that was weird and not what you thought was allowed but you didn't notice that you'd noticed it so that's the skill of a comic is
trying to draw out those things that people have noticed but they haven't noticed that they've noticed so you have to be really detailed you have to be um I think of it in terms of like if you ask if you if I asked you now to draw a hand most of us untrained uh uh graphic artists we would draw a sort of blob with five blobs coming off it and go there we go that's a hand what we would draw what we think a hand is supposed to look like but an artist real artist would
uh I say real artist to separate from comedians but a a real artist would go what do I actually see what is the shadow what's the light where are the lines and that's what we Tred to do to be a specific and detailed as possible with the stories that we tell based on an authentic connection with the audience and uh and I'm sure that this doesn't happen too often but when a bit does fail how dare you uh uh you make a you make yourself vulnerable yes and no connection yes what do you do that
can happen that happened to me at a Wembley arena in front of 16,000 people I walked out on stage I've been told I had the mic in my hand and the the sound tech backstage had said to me make sure you keep the mic right up close to your hand right up close to say into your mouth so they can hear you and I walked out on stage for the first time at Wembley Arena on the back of the stage it says hello Wembley in huge letters and I was so caught up in the sort
of the Majesty of the moment I went hello like and oh my God 16,000 people saw me make this s of awful amateurish mistake but I have to remind myself that my job when things go wrong I have to remind myself that my job is simply to build a house of cards if you've ever seen anyone build a house of cards in triangles the reason it's compelling to watch watch is because there is real risk it could go wrong if you saw someone build a house of cards with sticky tape and glue you wouldn't watch
it for 2 seconds what would be the point so I have to remind myself if if I'm to be authentic I have to take real risks the risk is what makes it so compelling so when something goes wrong if my joke goes wrong if someone slams a door and blows my house of cards over all I can do is smile to myself take a deep breath and calmly start trying to rebuild it so it can go wrong and it hurts when it goes wrong but there's no point crying about it you just have to go
oh never mind start again and do you think green Biz 24 can do that yes yes I think anyone can do that I think certainly some of the the the incredibly I mean I've met so many people here just in the last 24 hours I think that I was interviewing some people yesterday for the live stream and I would chat to them beforehand and say what's going on and they'd tell me what was really going on and then we' get on the with all due respect to these wonderful people I was interviewing they would I'd
say what's going on and they'd tell me the slightly more mediated version of what's going on and I think certainly here if not in your own organizations I think it's it's so valuable to say the unsayable to say the real thing the thing that makes you feel vulnerable to to say the thing which you feel like well like you know I mean between you and me I don't know you might feel like you don't want to share that because it makes you vulnerable I would suggest and I we talked about this maybe this is a
challenge for you for the rest of your day here at Green bids if the next time someone asks what are you into what are youing talking about what are you challenged by right now if you can push yourself to try to say what you really mean and so we thought to make this easier for the session after this wherever you go where you're having lunch or what have you if someone asks you what's going on just as you ask them just uh just grab it just give him a little signal just that just touch your
earlobe and that means I am happy to have a real conversation with you about what you really mean and what I really mean so try that for the rest of the day and see if you're able to uh to just uh Inspire some more meaningful conversations uh I feel like some of you are going to do that there's one person in the room who's got an itchy ear who's like this is going to be a nightmare the rest of my day is ruined uh and and what's on the other side of risk you know like
why why aren't people saying what they really mean why do you think that well the risks the risks that we take a different right my risk is I I lose my dignity if you know I do a routine it doesn't work oh this is awful feel terrible how bad is that really you'll get over it you know that was a great moment to leave sir um but uh my dignity um your risks will be different I know that your risk you're risking maybe what you're risking is sort of having a predictable rest of your day
you know if you really take a risk and say what you mean maybe that's that's the risk that you're thinking if this goes wrong or I'm misinterpreted maybe you lose the predictability of the rest of your day or or your week you know and you need to be careful you need to carefully choose the risks that you take if you want to be authentic you have to you have to share your real self but not all of it you have to sort of choose on purpose and with purpose the parts of your real self that
you really want to share so you have to choose those things very specifically and I think that allows you to be really intentional about sharing what you want to share and then you know you don't need to take risks you don't need to make jokes about your stock prices or endanger anything that's that's that you know that's really uh I think I said stock prices there is that a thing I meant share price is you don't know um look to some random person for help he blinks twice I'm out um but my point is you
have to decide which risks to take but you can still do that in an authentic way I think and you and I have given some examples of vulnerability U when we've been talking about this and you were sharing a really great story about being in the forest oh well yeah okay so so um if this is an example really of showing vulnerability to an audience and being and choosing what I share and also being detailed that thing about drilling down into the detail if I say I have a bit of material about becoming increasingly resentful
of my young family whilst on a forest walk and uh if I come out and say to an audience oh you know it's hard having kids well so what so far so Bland no one cares but if I'm detailed and if I share and I take a risk and say I'm going to say a thing I really think and I don't know if people are going to connect with this the line in the show that's a new show it's not been released yet in a special but um uh what I say is I'm instead of
imagining an argument with my wife where I'm where I'm saying God I can't cope with this I resent them and I resent you I resent you more I made them I only met you and and it's I'm so glad you're laughing because it m the risk there if that falls flat I'm this bastard oh God why is this man so mean to his wife and children but if I can share that with you in a safe way in managed conditions where I've chosen a piece of myself and said yes I think if I'm detailed about
this emotion that will resonate with other people who found themselves in that emotional state and so you've been up here helping us all with the extra help that we need and do you have any closing advice recap of thoughts what's the big thing you want to leave with I think that I of the various bits of of work that I do in a sort of in a business sphere the thing that I I think is most enjoyable a lot of this for me is based on my background as a podcaster I've spent the last 12
years interviewing over 450 comedians from all over the world in real forensic depth it's like the only not funny comedy podcast and uh you'd love it it's very it's fascinating you won't laugh and uh and drilling into them and it started off as an attempt to find out how people write their jokes and it quickly turned into how do people cope how do they cope with the challenges of a a life a creative life how do they cultivate their resilience how do they cultivate their authenticity how do they cope with criticism how do they cope
with isolation all of those things that that sort of have parallels for all of us and I think for me the biggest element of it is authenticity and being honest and saying what you genuinely mean and I think that's so important now I was watching a fabulous talk earlier on in one of the many rooms in this Labyrinth on venue um where people were the people on stage were talking about what it meant to them to really communicate with their audience and I think if you can do that from the basis of an authentic connection
where you make yourself vulnerable then you will be streets ahead of your compation well I hope all of us do a little uh today if you want to catch more stew and I'm sure you do you can catch them at 4:15 we're doing slide deck karaoke this is where people in the audience raise their hand to present a deck they have never seen before uh do come along to that it's only going to work if there's loads of us uh I got a disco ball from The Amazing James ball so it's going to be a
good time uh and also 700 p.m. at the marit time ste's doing a whole set so uh again line up swiftly uh for that um yeah start lining up now uh big round of applause for steuart goldi thank you so much
