Painted Nails. Broken Rules.

What if changing masculinity… started with something as simple as painted nails?

In this episode of Who’s Elvis Around Here?, Chris sits down with author, entrepreneur, and rule-breaker Sam Conniff for a surprising, thought-provoking conversation about identity, culture, and the hidden rules we all live by.

What begins as a trip to a Harry Styles concert with his daughter quickly turns into something much bigger — a nationwide experiment with hundreds of men, challenging ideas of masculinity and unlocking conversations many have never had before.

This episode dives into:

Why small acts of rule-breaking can create big cultural shifts
 What the “man box” is — and how it shapes behaviour
 Why men expected backlash… and what actually happened
 The link between uncertainty, anxiety, and human potential
 How leaders can unlock creativity by embracing the unknown

One of the most powerful takeaways?
 👉 What we often see as weakness can actually be a source of strength.

If you’ve ever questioned the rules you live by - or wondered how real change actually happens - this conversation will stay with you.

And if you want more from Sam, you can learn more about his work here https://www.samconniff.com
and explore his latest book The Uncertainty Toolkithere: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/sam-conniff/the-uncertainty-toolkit/9781035060054

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

So, welcome to the Who's Elvis Rounder Here podcast. This is where I get to hang out with some of the coolest leaders on the planet and the people who have more insight in how we can get genius from our people so that we can learn about what makes them tick and become better leaders ourselves. And I'm delighted this week to be joined by the amazing Sam Conlith. How are you, Sam?

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I'm really well. Thanks very much, Chris. If only due to the lack of not being a bit shit. It's been a long cold winter in my soul. And I don't feel that bad. Yeah, the good feeling is extraordinarily good.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

I know what you mean. It's been a shocker this winter. I never used to think I used to get affected by that. I thought, you know, my engine's too strong. But you know what? It got me this year.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, I mean, there's a degree of willful blindness to this kind of thing. I have a really, really good close friend. Uh, we've worked together for about 15 years, and I said something very similar, and she fell off her chair laughing. She said, I've worked with you for 15 years, and I know there's three months of the year, you're an absolute nightmare. I was like, really? So uh yeah, I think I've come I haven't yet fully invested the lamps and stuff, but I I I think I it's coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think the other way, I I only learned this phrase wintering recently, but the idea of like you know, rather than just becoming grumpy or or or denying it, like not shutting down, but um, you know, it looks like the fields are empty, but actually there's growth going on beneath, like as a metaphor for it. I quite like the idea of going in for a couple of months to come back in the spring.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, I I have a friend who's uh who does a lot of energetic work and she's all into like different seasons. You prune here, you you winter, you know, and and actually it's just part of a natural cycle. And maybe learning how to ride those cycles is a good thing. So I'm I'm I'm with you on that.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I'm I know it's well, but anyway, before we get back to the- My amazing niece has just started working for a gorgeous company that I've never heard of called Fern with two F's, and their whole vibe is that they release uh products um around the sense and the seasons. Absolutely bespoke, and I I mean it's almost the equivalent of a of a restaurant only cooking on a seasonal and sustainable basis. But um, they're they're worth following just for the stories that they tell about the seasons. I just listened to their last podcast, and it's it's a woman walking through the fields talking about how things have changed in between the two months, and it's yeah, it's kind of slow marketing. It's like the antithesis of the endless here's what you need to do next. Is the it's the take a look around you and see what you can learn about what's already here. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

I will check them out. Fern. Yeah, I'll I'll look at that. So look, um, Sam, can you share with the listeners? Uh, who who are you? Well, there's an interesting there is this can go on for some time.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah, with apologies to the listeners already. Um I don't I I mean, this is an interesting question, isn't it? Who are you, Sam? Sam, I uh and I mean you know we go on these big journeys of trying to find yourself. And uh I've I've been wondering about this question. Just be yourself, people say, and I always think, who am I? Um Sam, I've known Chris for many years. Uh I first came into your work when I used to run a social enterprise called Liberty, empowering young people to find platforms to launch themselves into the world. I started that in my 20s and ran it for the best part of two decades. Taught me an awful lot about leadership, but taught me an awful lot about unfairness um and and how the world works. If you if you want to get a good lens on that, try and try and support uh less privileged young people. Um and so I moved away from social enterprise whilst I still love it and and and admire all the people that work in it. I was frustrated by the ways that things actually got changed. And I wrote a book about rule breaking, and that probably defined another decade because it was under the banner of piracy. And so I'm I am also that pirate guy in the way that you must be that Elvis guy. I've got tattoos all over me and it changed my life. And uh I know an awful lot about both the true history of golden age pirates, but also the levers of professional rule breaking, which is what I want to what I tend to call it. How do we change the rules in a manner that's responsible when bureaucracy gets in our way? And more recently, I'm I'm I've become a scientist and I would lead the world's largest ever research study into uncertainty and its impact on human beings and provide tools for people to navigate the unknown in ways that lead to creativity instead of anxiety. So I'm a scientist pirate entrepreneur author.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

What a lovely summation. What a lovely summation. Well, look, uncertainty seems to abound right now. I would imagine your services will be uh will be much in demand because the world is a crazy, crazy place.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

It certainly is. It is uh statistically the most uncertain time in human history, which is obviously a daft thing to say considering it's always been the most uncertain time in human history. But the World Uncertainty Index has been recording this, uh, and in particular since 2008, the financial collapse. And by its standards, and obviously this is economists, so you know, about as reliable as astrology, um uh we are three times as uncertain as we were in the depths of COVID. So just as one indicator as to where we where we are and what's coming next. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Well, look, um lovely to have you on because um, you know, obviously we're about energy and leadership and culture, and you have some very specific spins on that. So um I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what insights will come my way. But let's start with tell us a story you love to tell that people love to hear.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

I re I mean, I just love that question. Um I I I've thought about it, and I am really uh it's either lucky or I have a real or your question, and maybe this is in fact, as I say, maybe this is obviously deliberately to tab into a bit of a relay, isn't it? Because the ego boost that I have had throughout the years in that moment of people, you know, when you get the chance to tell the story and people are like, well, that's interesting. And you're like, I haven't even started. Uh and you've you know you've got someone in you, and and for me, incredibly luckily, those have been the big chapters of my life. Liberty was that, you know, we run a market scan, it helps young people. Tell me more, you know, the the tens of thousands of stories of young people that I could uh recount because they were the lifeblood of a business, of a material business, or pirates and the unexpected story of of golden age pirates that everyone thinks they know as Jack Sparrow, but actually how that had become a a lever for change in the turn of the 21st century. Um so on and so forth. But I'm also a bit fickle, and I have a I've realized over time that I have about you know a three-year professional attention span. So um I have to go with the thing that's really exciting me at the moment, the story that I really love to tell, is when people ask me why I've got my nails painted. Uh as a 50-year-old, you know, straight white man, uh, I get quite a lot of quite a lot of funny looks. And um, when I first got them painted, it's it's begun a story that's really taken up a large part of my attention for the last couple of years, and it's probably going to define what I do for the next couple of years. So I'll I'll tell you that one if that's right.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

That'd be beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Thank you. All right. Um my daughter turned 10, and we I took her to Harry Styles, and you get dressed up to go and see Harry Styles, which is an appropriate thing to do. So we decided, she decided she'd like to go and get her nails done properly. So I took her to the nail salon, but neither one of us had ever been, we had a glorious time. Saw Harry, had an even more glorious time. Uh, the weekend comes to a close, and it's Sunday night, and I asked my wife for the nail polish remover. And my wife says, You can't take those off with nail polish remover, you idiot. They're they're gels and shellacks or whatever it is. Um, and it turns out you have these things on your nails that would survive the bloody apocalypse, right? They are not not going anywhere. So Monday rolls around, and I just have to go to work and into meetings, and these these conversations happen. And and before the conversations, this silent judgment happens, and the people are looking, and what's this? And by the end of the week, the conversations range from so are you coming out now, Sam? Are you starting a campaign? Uh, can I talk to you about my daughters? I'm really concerned about the overall narrative of violence against women. My son's getting-I mean, it just went on and on. Like I was all of a sudden the fountain of all knowledge of masculinity and gender fluidity, which of course, like for many years and for many thousands of men, far braver than me, of all different persuasions and perspectives, people have been getting their nails praited intentionally to challenge gender rigidity and and heteronormative stereotypes and harmful biases. Mine was literally just to go to a Harry Styles concert. You and I uh will have had a similar outlook on what it means to be a man as we've grown up, and you and I will probably experience how hard it is for most men to talk about a lot of these topics, and yet there they were this little signal that said, Come and talk to me about your concerns about masculinity right now in a world that seems like masculinity is part of the problem, and that doesn't necessarily feel fair to most of the men who are quite decent and not very toxic, just exhausted. But all we hear around us is about toxic masculinity, and we desperately want to do something, but I'm actually really nervous, and so it falls into the same category as the millions of men who find it very hard to seek help. The the the reason that suicide is the biggest killer of men in their 50s, the these things are all connected. So I went on a journey, carried on getting my nails done, fell in love with it, uh, started writing a bit about it on my newsletter, encouraging other men to try it out and tell me what their experiences were, to the point that I got 50 blokes to a nail salon in East London with a friend of mine who does diversity and inclusion stuff to help me understand it. These blokes had their own very moving experiences, which convinced me there was really and truly something in this. So last year, with academic oversight, I ran it as a large-scale social experiment. Over 400 men signed up, every region of the country. They uh took a series of psychological scales, uh, a rigidity to identity and masculinity norm scale, an empathy scale, and something that's known as the man box scale, which by the way is worth delving into for a second because it explains an awful lot of things. The man box was identified as a psychological construct that holds men back, and it holds men back from being their best selves and it holds men back from helping others. The man box asks you a series of questions, such as you know, is looking after yourself, is looking after your image a manly thing to do? Uh, can a gay man be a real man? Is it ever appropriate to use violence to defend yourself and your family? A set of questions that will have results depending on your experience of life and where you are on that scale. Sure. But if you answer all of the questions in an extreme way, the this scale that's been studied extensively over the last several years, uh reliably indicates men who are more at risk of harm to themselves and harm to others, from domestic violence to violence against women to self-harm and suicide. And the other end of the spectrum can be seen as a uh a morph between toxic and healthy masculinity, although those terms themselves can be problematic. Um, and so we began to think, well, maybe we can measure this, right? So we we began to look into it. 400 men signed up, hundreds of them took part, they went to salons in groups, they they got their nails painted by their daughters. However, they did it was fine with us. All they had to do was wear their painted nails for a week and go about their daily business work, sports, gym, whatever they were uh part of their life. Keep a series of anonymous diaries, join a WhatsApp group they wanted to, uh, some focus groups, it was a robust set of research studies, and then they took the scales again, and it was phenomenal. Really? Yeah. Air to a man, they all left the salon uh expecting violence. They expected to get attacked. Wow, yeah. Yeah, you know, imagine you're you're you're an ordinary guy, bright pink nails, and they thought they were gonna get assaulted. So for 24 hours they're on defense mode, being strong enough to defend their you know what they thought was feminine or gay nails. These are the words that are being used. And then there's this kind of disappointment when they had to come off high alert and these uh where did these stereotypes come from? Why did I think this might be misinterpreted as a challenge of my sexuality or my identity? And then the first comment they got was usually nice nails, mate, you know, from like a barista or someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what the fuck is this? And then gradually conversations began to emerge, and they were universally positive. People younger than them, people who were strangers to them, people in their offices saying, I love that. This is a wonderful, you know, thanks for you know, this this brave act of representation, or why are you doing this? What's behind it? And then they found themselves getting into useful and interesting conversations, the likes of which they'd never had, sometimes with their family members, sometimes with daughters, sometimes crossing bridges they'd never had the the opportunity to do. And then the final stage this introspection, this oh my god, what I thought was weakness has been a form of strength. What else have I been holding on to throughout my life as a man that has held up these ideas of masculinity and being a strong bloke? You know, from bad clothes I wear to the music I say I like to the conversations I do and don't have to the times I've shown my emotions, and and that's the man box. It's four scales. One being that strength is exhibited by dominance, one that emotions will always lead to you to weakness, one that success is a uh heroic journey. So, you know, as I say it, it sounds like so many aspects on the spectrum of leadership that we both know, you know, and and some of those drivers do lead to leadership, and some of those drivers are still very caught up, you know. Strength and dominance, of course, they sit together and vulnerable. It's challenging, right? But there's not a story in the news cycle at the moment where masculinity isn't one of the ingredients, and it's usually a harmful character. So we got to the end of it. Uh 92% of the men have moved positively on every single one of the scales. There's an 84% increase in men who say that they've actually spoken up in defense of others or taken part in taboo topics or conversations. There's a 40% increase in a uh sense of confidence about topics that otherwise I mean it was phenomenal in terms of the response. And it's because in the academic oversight we we had, we discussed it at some great length, and we ended up choosing a very strong word, which was the men had an epiphany. An epiphany has a definition because there was a visceral response of fear, and then a massive cognitive dissonance between expectations and reality, and then a level of introspective depth that we all rarely get to. You then you then move, and it's all summed up with with one guy, Max, who's a public speaker, facilitator, stand-up comedian, you know, thick skinned basically, and also an enormous football fan. Max goes with his nails to watch the football, gets to the pub, hand on the door in front of him, looks down at his hand, looks at the pub door, hand on, thinks, fuck that. I'm not going into the pub tonight. I don't want to put up with that. And as he walks home, he suddenly considers all the other people in the world who don't get to go where they want to go for fear of feeling safe. And of course, it's not the same as being trans or being black or being a woman at night, but most men have never walked a millimeter in those shoes, and for a second, there's a depth of experience and empathy that brings us closer together rather than further apart. And so I'm I've been sitting on this data and trying to work out what the hell to do with it. And I feel ridiculous to suggest that painting their nails could be the answer to one of society's biggest objectives. Here we are between everything from Louis Thoreau's new documentary to the impact that adolescence has and looking at you know these tyrannical male despots at the tops of our organizations, and I'm here suggesting that I'm gonna get men to get their nails done as some kind of answer. I mean, it's pretty fucking mad. But that is what I'm about to set out to go and do because the evidence is really clear. It's really clear.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah. It's really clear. And look, I um sometimes the simplest accidents give you the best breakthroughs, right? So um in this particular case, well done Harry Stiles, you know. You know, but I I've I can really connect with this. I have uh I've got a friend who used to be part of a business called Fairy Love, right? And they used to do uh all this, it's an Australian thing where kids, when they're when they're young, they dress up as fairies and they used to have all these big fairy parties, and they brought it to Glastonbury and would dress up all these people at festivals, right? And they they decided to take it a bit further. And I remember being in uh in the middle of Herefordshire in a little market town of Leadbury, and he made me wear fairy wings on a weekday, and I had to go up to strangers and give them wishes. Um, burley farmers, actually, is what he he chose for me. And a wish, I had to put a little bit of glitter on their face. Uh, and honestly, I was in that place petrified. I was like, someone is gonna knock me out. Um, and you know what? All I got was warmth, all I got was connection, and and I I had a bit of a revelation there that actually my appreciation of what masculinity was like and how I showed up was all boxed, to be honest. So you know that was quite an extreme example, but I can I can really connect with how um something like nails can actually shift identity in quite a substantive way and in a very surprising way. So so I you know, I I I love that story. I'm I'm really interested to see where you go with this.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Well, uh the my plan, I'm literally this week I've been writing the the web copy. Uh I've been researching male influencers and not your average masculinity influencers, but blokes with a big following who give DIY techniques or gardening techniques or you know Excel spreadsheet techniques. Um uh I've been working with some salons around the country who'll be willing to host men's evenings um or maybe give me you know discounts or or offer wives and girlfriends to bring in their blokes. Uh I've been looking at the research. Are we measuring the right scales? Um, what's the other research out there around it? So we're gonna go again in October 2026, and I'm gonna try and get 10,000 men this time, because if I get 10,000 men this time and I double it every year, that means by 2030 I'll have nigh-on 330,000 men. That's 3.5% of the adult male, the midlife male population in this country, which is both where you have the highest suicide rates, but it's also where you have arguably the greatest influence on society. That's where you have the senior police officers, that's where you have the heads of business, that's where you have the gatekeepers of inclusivity and diversity in pursuit of genuine advances in growth, not not like from a cultural perspective, but like how do we open the gates and doors of society in a way that's more progressive and uh egalitarian in a way that helps every aspect and brings up, raises up the levels of every aspect of society. And there's a there's a idea that if you can move 3.5% of a population, in fact, the argument is no social movement that's achieved 3.5% engagement in a population has ever failed. So that's the ambition. Can we can we look at a very society in the 2030s? Because masculinity and its rigidity affects everything from safety to sustainability.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Yeah, no, it really does. And I think you know, there are um getting some more tolerance and love and connection with people who aren't like I mean my my daughter's trans, and bless her, she you know, she gets shouts out on the street every day. She she's been beaten up for just being trans because you know, there's a difference that we're not we're not comfortable with. And if we can just get some simple movements around identity and a bit more connection to humanity, uh, I think it can make a huge difference. So I love this project. I think this is fantastic, Sam. Lovely to hear. And if I can help it anyway, give me a shout.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Uh, I am gonna quote you on that. Um I might record it. It's here, mate. It's from the Somerset, are you? You're in you're in the West.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

Yeah, southwest, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Right. Uh when we get started, I'd be looking for folks who have decent uh followings and friendship groups, and I will find a salon who will host us, and you and I will get some uh drinks together, you get the dudes, and I will organise the nails.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Deal on, deal on.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Well, look, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Um so look, next question. Um What is the single most important thing about bringing the genius of our people?

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Uh so you're gonna have to stop me parroting a press release here because this is this is my this is my present work, and but I'll I'll say it not in pursuit of promoting my book, which is available now on Amazon. Um but because I've researched this very thoroughly and diligently for the last four and a half years, and I can give you two words. Uh uncertainty tolerance is uh undoubtedly the most important thing in releasing whether you call it genius or potential or opportunity, or and the reason why genius spoke to me on this is because uh uh when so uncertainty tolerance was first discovered in the 1990s uh by two psychologists researching anxiety, medication, and reduction. Uh turns out uncertainty is the biggest single driver of anxiety disorder in the world. Um, and it's the fundamental of all human fears is the unknown. And and so it's been studied uh extensively. So it can be called uncertainty tolerance as a as a it's a you can we can we can simplify it as a skill, and and for your listeners, uh it's easy to think about uncertainty tolerance as a leadership skill. Technically, it's a leadership, uh it's a it's a neural capability. And when uncertainty tolerance is down, it is causally linked to lower rates of empathy because we don't understand, we we we don't like people, we we we we feel scared by them, um, higher rates of exhaustion because uncertainty affects us physically in the body and the nervous system as well as in the in the brain. We become our biases and our prejudices go up, so we literally and measurably become more closed minded. We default to patterns of previous um experiences, so like kids who see faces in the shadow. Or all of us who see stories in the spreadsheets that aren't there, or that boss that we've all had who's always got one idea and it always comes out when they're, you know, when they're in trouble. Um and yet when uncertainty tolerance goes up, our capacity for wider decision making increases, our capability to uh consider broader horizons, our ability for divergent thinking to see patterns that we couldn't previously see. Uh groupthink disappears. I mean, it's been studied in elections, we are less likely to go for extremism. It's profound. And it's rare that you get something that's such a complete silver bullet or a red thread. But it in medical science terms, it's what's known as a trans diagnostic because it sits across so many challenges. So it's a it sounds like I might be overselling it, but please feel free to look it up. Uncertainty tolerance, uh if you can increase the uncertainty tolerance of an individual or a team, you you almost arguably can increase their genius because they can uh measurably conceive of things that they couldn't previously see or do or feel or be. And they're less uh defined by the previous patterns of their life, and they're more capable of being able to imagine what they couldn't see or feel before.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Well, I'm sold on this because I mean I spend a lot of time helping people with their energy and obviously understanding our inbuilt negativity bias and the way we react to things subconsciously is a big part of kind of what I do. So totally with you. How uh from your research do we develop that ability?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Uh shorthand is read our book. Um, the the the longhand is um I've been working on this in I we we've we've developed in numerous different formats. It's currently a book. We started as a course, I worked on it for two years with Netflix, making it as a documentary, and um irregardless of the format, there's one thing that consistently stands true, and it's the framework that sits behind it. And and so that there's something that listeners can get their hands on, it's it's this. Uh, the other, and I promise this is my last wonky scientific term, transdiagnostic is one way to understand the importance and strategic benefit of uncertainty tolerance. And and the way that, and this is often difficult for leaders, uh, uncertainty is psychobiological. The challenge for leaders, particularly in the last decade, um, and and and beforehand, with the kind of way that we've approached leadership, is that we can think our way through most problems. Uh, that there's a probability framework for this, or there's a spreadsheet that will get me through, or there's a model that exists. And fair enough, there often has been. But in a world where many of our problems are increasingly paradoxes, and there isn't a clear binary outcome, and we have to tolerate not knowing, then a lot of those probability frameworks become more and more fragile. So the opportunity in uncertainty is to understand that uncertainty is not just a thought process, you can think your way through it, but it's a felt process. And you've just alluded to this, the sensation of the unknown or the unexpected triggers a threat response, and that threat response will reduce your cognitive ability. So, unless we are able to conceive and admit that there is a felt response, and having a felt response isn't an emotional weakness, but it's a it's a strength and an aptitude, and that there is data in our body and those emotions that can help our brains make good decisions, we'll never get great uncertainty. But when we convince leaders of this and we tap them into skills such as interreception or embodied cognition, and you know, lots of leaders need scientific terms to feel confident about our natural elements that keep us alive, and lots of you know, thousands of year-old wisdoms are very attuned to something happens. Now, so the simple evidence for this is ask anybody what they think about uncertainty, and they'll give you a balanced reply. It can be a pain in the neck, but it can take you to new places, right? And that's that's everyone's lived experience, and that's what we believe. Then ask them how uncertainty makes them feel, and you will get probably about 80% of the responses will be a negative set of emotions. And I know this because I've asked 30,000 people. And so I've grouped every single negative emotion that people describe around uncertainty, and they all fit into one of three clusters. And by understanding those three clusters, we understand why uncertainty is a problem. Because it sounds like, oh, you know, of course, this fragility is a moment where we should be investing and innovating. Of course, this new technology is something that we should all be adopting so that we've got the skills for the future. You know, we know the narrative, but how does it feel? And that probably shows up as sabotage and self-doubt and inner criticism and all of these problems because the feelings and the thoughts are so different. Um, so the three clusters uncertainty makes me anxious, fretful, worried, and scared. So we call that fear. Uncertainty makes me confused and decisive, a bit circular. I'm just not sure. So we call that fog. Uncertainty makes me feel stuck, listless, like I've lost my mojo. So we call that stasis. So fear, fog, stasis. It's never been challenged, nothing's ever sat outside of those three. You'd explain that to your team, everyone feels very seen and heard. Sometimes people are experiencing one, sometimes all three. That's a very tricky time. Um, but by getting into the the subterranean, the the iceberg effect, the underlying notion, because they're words that are hard to articulate, they're hard to admit, but those are the natural and protective and very important emotions of uncertainty. And by recognizing them, realizing them, and then reducing them, you can bring your the best of your brain back online. And then with those two aspects in coordination, that is how the kind of magic sounds a bit bit far-fetched, but the genius potential of uncertainty where people do things that they didn't think they could do before, when the breakthroughs come, because it's the emotions that put on the brakes. And I'm very, very, very proud of this. I didn't um do very well at education. My I I still remember my GCSE science teacher, Dr. Phillips, telling me my atoms would amount to nothing. And now a published scientist, uh, the fact that the acronym of fear, fog, and stasis is the is the baseline of my um published work, uh FFS to the world, makes me very, very proud. Yeah, well, you should be.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Uh and it look, it's a beautiful articulation of something that actually is quite complex to a lot of people's experience. Um, and kind of understanding how that works is the the first step, right? Because if we can understand the way that our design works so that we just get a bit more awareness and therefore choice, that's the first way in, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Yeah, yeah.

unknown 28:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Love it. Well, I'm looking forward to reading that book that's uh that's fast approaching.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Um it will be. You give me your address afterwards and I will send you a copy. There's a QR code at the beginning and at the end. We've tested in a neuroscience lab. You can get an actual measure in a score by reading the book. First book of its kind that does that kind of thing. And it will help you on the journey of our nails. You know, these things are all connected. They're high you're on television.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

They're all connected. Well, look, my my final question, Sam. What is it that gives you hope?

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Pirates. Uh pirates, yeah. And and this is where yours and my journey is like, you know, what one day we should have a pirate versus Elvis like battle. I spent a long time looking at the personification of an archetype uh that exists in people's minds and in culture, and with such depth and such resonance, and what happens when you step not just into its shadow, but into its suit. Um and my exploration with pirates, you know, it was 10 years ago. It was a book in retrospect. I wrote a book called Be More Pirate uh 10 years ago. In retrospect, I wrote it to myself. That only became clear when I read it a few years after and I read the last chapter, and it was just a message to myself. I was in a very I wasn't in the best place. Uh, I felt quite trapped. Um I I'd loved building this business, but it now got to a point that I, you know, like I say, I've realized now in my later stages of life that I have a professional attention span and it had thoroughly run out. I'm a good startup founder, I was a terrible CEO, awful troublemaker. Uh and so I was caught in the wrong position, and I wasn't in a relationship that was particularly good for me or anyone else. And yet I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was being a grown-up, and I was trying very, very hard to be the man that I wasn't. And and so the internal external exercise was an argument about how we actually make a difference and why I thought so much of entrepreneurship and innovation was flawed. The internal exercise that I didn't realize I was actually doing some work on was my own kind of uh need for independence and freedom and creativity. And the outcome of it was a book written with a lot of love and a fuckload of mistakes, um, but a huge amount of passion and a and and the story that very few people know, which is the true history of pirates, golden age pirates, the Jack Sparrow, Captain Hooker pirates, are actually part of the long arc of the English working class and the role that they've played for fairness and equality all around the world. And we understand the levellers and the Chartists, and we understand the trade union movement and the cooperative, and we understand the suffragettes and the fight for workers' rights, and we understand that they're all connected, but there is a missing gap in the early part of the 1700s, and that's where golden age pirates were. That that's genuinely their lineage. They they they then move into the cooperatives and the trade unions, uh, and they were inspired by the uh all of the other efforts of the English working class fighting for equality beforehand. But because they represented such a threat to democracy, their story was rewritten um in the history books, and we now have them as these foolish, lovable rogues and villains that we let our children dress up as, which is a unique place in history. There are no other murderous villains that we uh you know characterize in such a way. And I've I've tried that many times. I've suggested mafia-themed parties for my kids and have parties, and it never works. Only pirates hold that space. And in this work, I have the deep privilege, um, as I'm sure you and as I know you do, when you let people step into a uh an avatar that in one hand represents something that we feel deeply and fondly about, and it represents adventure, it represents a willingness to swash a buckle and and and and you know swing through the bullshit of your life and put a cutlass to the neck of the bureaucracy that holds you back and sit on a cannon and blast through all the bollocks. Like we all want that so much, a little bit. And you can't be a pirate at the time, it's bloody exhausting. Um, I've tried. Uh, but you can be a pirate when you get stuck, and that is a gift and a liberation. And and I thought this work would be, you know, I thought it would be a book, I thought it'd be interesting. I didn't know that 10 years later I would be running workshops with senior leaders uh upon whom other people's lives depend upon, and it would help them create breakthroughs that would lead to innovations that could save organizations millions or save lives. And and you know, I cannot believe what it does. But it does what it does because of two things, and this is why it gives me hope. I have been eternally surprised at how closely even the most senior leaders, even people I respect deeply, even the ones that have got their fingers on the buttons that determine our all of our futures, how closely everyone holds on to the exact same stories that hold them back, and it's remarkable. Here's the thing, it's been holding me back my whole life, and I'm never ever ever going to put it down because it kind of makes me feel weird. I mean, and we're all in this pretty, you know, interesting uh relationship with our limitations. And to watch someone put on a pirate hat metaphorically, I don't make people do that, that would be cheesy, but you know, metaphorically and emotionally, and and challenge some of their own rules and limitations, uh, and watch that freedom is fucking amazing. And what I experienced, because I couldn't believe its success, it wasn't, you know, like I say, subconsciously, I was just writing it for myself to see someone else do something with it. It's like, wait, what are you doing? So I wrote a sequel book called How to Be More Pirate, which wasn't me just trying to ruthlessly exploit the success of the first, although it might look like it. A woman far cleverer than me, whose background was genuinely in social innovation, she now runs the pirate community because I wanted to see that it existed, you know, not through the lens of my own ego. Uh, and she conducted a series of interviews with organizations and individuals who put it into practice and made it work in ways that I never would have imagined. And you know what? There's one word that came out pirate, and then people say they've been a pirate, is just a proxy for permission. And when people give themselves permission to do something, there's very little they can't do. And so even though it's 10 years old, even though I never ever dreamed it would be anywhere near the success it has, or I'd still be doing it, or that you could get away with, you know, using pirates as a replacement for you know leadership. Uh, when I see people give themselves permission to let go of the stuff that holds them back, I'm deeply hopeful for humanity.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Yeah. Well, yeah, um, what a great place to be. And I love the fact that you after all that work with all those people, it boils down to permission. Yeah, man. Uh I mean it's a it's a pretty fundamental insight. Uh, Sam, I have loved talking to you. I think we could do this for days, quite a bit. I think so. I think we should.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

We should. Um, what nails you're gonna get done, Chris? How are you gonna bring a bit of Elvis to the net? I mean, you're gonna have to go really hard.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

That's exactly what I'm gonna have to do. Um I I've already got my mind spinning. My well, my daughter, her nails, they're about this long. So maybe, maybe I'm I don't know how she picks anything up, but that's what she does. Um, so so what's coming up? What were you excited about in the future?

SPEAKER_00 35:21

I'm excited. Uh I'm excited because I'm about to get old. Um I'm I'm arriving at an age if you never asked younger Sam, I would have assumed I'd retired or something. Um and it's remarkable. I mean, I I once read a uh uh about the surprise of turning 60. I'm not quite 60, but certainly the surprise of turning old and not feeling old is a real thing. And and I don't just feel the same, I feel something shifting. I've never been a particularly good leader, although leadership has always interested me. I think there's aspects that I do well, but but the the leader manager bit of teams. Uh and now I'm part of a team. We sold the uncertainty experts last year to a wonderful learning company. It wasn't the biggest deal in the world, it wasn't gonna, you know, it wasn't lottery type things. It was a strategic decision to go with a firm that I respected and a leader that I loved to turn it into something that I never would have been able to do. And that's the point. I'm not a CEO or a leader or an entrepreneur who's ever scaled something successfully. And I've had enough experience of having great ideas and seeing them be not fully realized. Um and and I'm now part of a team. And that's not my normal spot, right? I'm not the boss, I'm not the most interesting person, I don't get the first word or last word. Uh my job is to turn what we've made into the best thing that it can be as part of a team. And that's really interesting for me, and I really respect it. And and they've got tons of brilliant corporate clients who can, you know, unlock these uncertainty tools for the for the growth and sustainability that they need. But it means I get to do the stuff that I never would have been able to do when we were a short team. So I'm looking at how we run it with the police and in prisons and in with teachers and in schools, and it's incredible. But it's also a part it's given me a part-time job. I haven't had a job for 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Well, you happen unemployable, pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and I say that with love and respect to my CEO, poor guy. Um, and and luckily he's he's the nicest of guys. Uh and so um, yeah, I am genuinely entering into a very, very new world. And I mean, I have funny dreams about it. I dream about him being my dad, and I dream about being trapped under underground. So there's obviously some like inner fears going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's perfectly normal. Um but it feels like an appropriate challenge for the age I'm at, the stage I'm at, the maturity of the ideas that I've got, the the you know, the the things we're supposed to do that you and I advocate, you know, do the thing that scares you most. Probably one of the things that scares me most is growing up. And and I say growing up in inverted commas because I think that generally that's a trap. But can we mature these ideas that we've had? Can we deliver them at scale, not for scale's sake, but for the the sake of increasing their impact? You know, that feels very frightening to me, and they're therefore very challenging and probably hopefully very rewarding.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

When you say it, your energy is very grounded.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah, thanks. I I it's funny, it taps into a place, and I have never been there. Grounded is not the word anyone who knows me would have ever used.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

No, I like it. I like it. That's a nice combination, nice Sam combo there.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Well, um, it's been an absolute pleasure. I we're gonna hang out more. I can feel it, it's gonna be great. Uh I look, good luck with all of the your endeavours. I um I think what you're doing is fantastic. There's some stuff there that the world desperately needs, so uh, so more power to that. And um yeah, look forward to seeing the next adventures coming our way, Sam.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

I really appreciate you and really respect you, and I'm very grateful for the conversation. Thanks.