Colin Hunter 0:07
Hi, folks, and welcome to another episode of the leadership tales Podcast. I’m Caitlyn Hunter. Today I’m joined by a very good friend costs direct costs. And I have worked very closely together for a number of years. And I count a few people in my life who I can just sit down and feel very, very comfortable with. And he’s one of them. Good close friends. But he’s got a story and we’re going to focus a lot on on his personal side of his life. Today, he was during the pandemic, he set up comedians on Zoom. So we discovered a while ago, that he was a stand up comic, and we found some videos of him even though his career that the organisation at that time he worked for, they didn’t know he was a stand up comic. So it was fascinating to see that and then to see over the pandemic, help comedians and zooms, start to put some really good material out there. Funny things that I was able to dial into, but then start to use. They’re there, they’re almost a group of people to start different conversations with the agencies involved in a number of the things that were raised Black Lives Matters, race, and cost. And we’ll talk through that today around those conversations, and also about the improvisational comedy and how that’s that plays a part in his life. And it plays a big part in what we do at potential squared. It’s it crafted our work with the actors, and how we bring actors in to develop conversations. So there’s a common thread and theme in here. So delighted to welcome course, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this episode, look forward to getting your feedback.
Caustan De Riggs 1:46
I am delighted and honoured today to have on this session, one of my very, very good friends who work together for all how many years and must be five, six years now, of course, and but because of the rigs, pleasure to have you here, just for those who don’t know, Causton, then let me tell you a bit about and this is a, this is a bit of my spiel on the bit of the field of courses give me about himself. But of course, and for me, as has been in my life, one of the deepest partnerships I’ve had in terms of working with somebody code delivering for clients. And that’s reflected in how he works. But I think the key thing is that the drive that Causton has in his relationships with clients, and relationships with consultants and people like myself, to create positive impact. And that’s in his work, but also outside his work. Random interest. So I always love the story that one of my colleagues, when we were first first Merkerson was on YouTube and found costs on a standard video. So he’s got comedy, DIY, collecting stories, real estate, entrepreneurship, so massive amounts of interest in there. But of course, instead seven years in innovation, 10 years in sales, an 18 years in leadership development. So he sort of puts me in the shade in terms of what he’s been able to do in his life. But I’m delighted to have you on course, and then welcome.
Thanks, calling, you are far too generous in your introduction. And I’ll never forget that feeling when I was trying to keep a professional face. And so we found your YouTube videos, and it’s like, oh, no, what did they find can really change the course of this conversation? But I love the way that you just embrace it. Is this such a clear sign that when you know we work with with you, it’s like, it’s not just about the work, you’re looking at the whole person. And that just made that space, so much easier to just think about what cool creative things we could do together to bring impact to the clients we’re supporting. Thank you. No Pleasure, pleasure to have you on and near the bureau a bit more on podcast cost is around around this concept of creating playgrounds and being more wrong in your life. And I’d love us to take us down a line today around acting comedy and improv because I’d love to understand a bit about how you did that how you started up and we can weave in the other bits in your life and our lives around. But, but the improv piece, a big fan of the use of actors in our business, but comedy and improv, tell me about comedians on Zoom or tell the listeners a bit about comedians. And yeah, so comedians on Zoom is one of those pandemic passion projects. That’s not a term maybe it should be trademarked. I don’t know. But last April or March, March, April 2020. We just been a loyal shut down. And earlier that year, I went on a trip with one of the comics, his name’s Alex. He’s always been someone who was hilarious, and I always wanted to work on a project with him. So we were just hanging out and we’re on the beach and as i Hey, let’s find a way of doing a project this year. And I had been hearing some of that same comments from a few other people who are just funny like Greg to hang out with and whenever you’re with them, it’s like you don’t have a script, you just go back and forth on each other. So it was like when April came around and everything shut down, I invited four people as like, let’s just get on a zoom call, we’ll record it for an hour treat it as an experiment. No preparation, let’s just riff. And that was the first episode. And we just laughed so hard. And the cool thing for that moment was none of those people knew each other. They just trusted me enough to just jump on a zoom call that I was going to record and and try and get some humour from. So I spent the weekend editing and then I put together a little clip, and I put it out, I’m like, let’s just see what happens if I share this with, you know, people on Instagram. And we started to get a lot of people reaching out like, what is this? When did you start it? Wow, like, how can I help. And then the next week, I went from having four people on screen to like, nine, I’m just getting a lot of interests. And that family is just kind of grown. So we swap in and out. We record every week we the stuff that we talk about that serious as well. So shortly after we got started, the world had a dial opening on anti racism period, right, not just in America, that was a global wake up call. So we had some dialogues on equality as well, as you know, many of us are black on the show, many of us care about other social causes. And so we had a couple conversations where even the Toronto Police decided that they would agree to send a speech that they weren’t doing any shows at that time. But they sent 21 year veteran who came and shared experiences in dealing with breaking down racial barriers. And we also invited a human rights lawyer. She’s actually brilliant and does all kinds of law. But we asked her to focus on the human rights portion. And in some senses, where you think those two audiences but just, you know, destroy each other, we found common ground. And we saw that even through the comedy leading into those serious talks, we’re able to bring people together. And like as the show grew, people started doing more sketches. Every now and then we would do a serious topic to let people know that we were seeing current and what really mattered in the world. But the rest of the time is improv exploration about what happened in the news that week. And we would get on your record. And we would share it back out that’s comedians on Zoom. So writing about a year in which is one of the biggest surprises to me still going. And teams growing, we get some new talent lining up. And it’s comedians on zoom on YouTube, or Instagram. All one word.
Colin Hunter 7:30
Amazing. And, you know, I’ve watched it and one of the things that fascinates me, Austin about that just dipping in a bit further into is the people who I didn’t think would title themselves as comedians coming in. So a couple of the people I know who are in this, whoa, okay. And it worked it were funny. There were were in there. So for a lot of people listening and thinking you could never do stand up or improv, how’s it worked? Have you been able to craft that?
Caustan De Riggs 7:59
So I don’t want to take you down the rabbit hole here calling but I think we’re gonna have to put down a bit of a rabbit hole. Things I’ve always loved when we talked about the amount of time is spent in leadership development, is that people are riddled with doubt, always will second guess themselves. And how do people break out of that mindset was like a substantial portion, actually, almost half of my life at this point, spending time with people and coaching and doing that around projects. So it becomes just part of you, you zero in on really cool qualities about people that you see glimpses of, but you try to encourage them to explore. And so I think there are only two other people who’ve done stand up, that were a part of the crew of nine and other people make, you’re just really funny, you’re fast or quick witted, or I noticed that whenever you pipe in, you say these very insightful comments in a serious way. But I wonder what that would be like if this were comedy. And so we just tested it out. And what I ended up doing was just continuing to encourage people individually and trying to create a safe space for people to try things out. And then people just grow into it. And then, you know, people got more comfortable putting out tweets that they never used to put out before, or sketches that had been put out before. And it was great to see that coming from the fact that the team came together and learned to leave it open. And you know that yes, and factor and just kind of go with the flow. And then offline, you just spend your time encouraging people you know,
Colin Hunter 9:24
it is almost as spooky parallels here. So, you know, the there’s a piece here about leadership, he talked about, you know, the race issues we’ve had over the last year and I’m bringing those groups together to have tough conversations but good conversations and find common ground. So there’s almost a really serious formula element to that. And then there’s the ability to as you say, to riff and and to build connection but also it’s a psychological safety for people to take a risk and do stuff they’ve never done before. So it is it’s like a leader running a team and you know, part of this is about creating Development playground for people. So it’s been successful for you in that context. Yeah.
Caustan De Riggs 10:04
Yeah.
Colin Hunter 10:05
I just want to come into the improv because you talked about, you know, inside everybody has the potential to do that. And maybe tell me a bit about how you got into this and how you got into comedy. And you know, I won’t tell which video was YouTube I watched on my colleague Georgia, the term watch, but how did you get into it? And, and what does it give you? Because some people will be thinking, well, maybe I want to get into this now. How did you start? It?
Caustan De Riggs 10:30
It wasn’t like a class clown, per se. But I always had a smartass remark to say growing up that my parents actually thought I was going to be a lawyer when I was like five that’s what they would call me. They would you know, joke as I got older, my ever since you were young, you’d always have some kind of comment to make like, it just hits you. But it wasn’t until high school? Oh, no, I was actually let’s go for that. Let’s elementary school, any public speaking for the competition that we had to do. I always just told jokes, because it was the easiest way to kind of leave the audience feeling a bit more joyful. We always had some great experiences around that. And then I wondered if I can do a little bit more of it in high school. And so I just started practising like sketches doing, you know, this pre cell phone video reveal my age here. So getting videography and putting teams together, I was rather expensive. And so is always like, well, what can we just do live in the moment. And I was first exposed to I think the Canadian Improv Games when I was in grade, 1016 years old. And it was just this community where the same way where schools have competitive sports, believe it or not, they had competitive improv and you go and it was mind blowing to me to just see how good people were at this. And as I want to, I want to get better. And I would just practice with the team. We had a couple more friends join and they were called the busta guts was our team name back then. But we did really well. And we formed really tight relationships. And it was they’re just different than normal friendships. Because like in improv, everything is raw, like what you see is directly coming from the person’s heart unfiltered. And so it’s it’s really fast way of getting to know each other. And I stayed with it all through high school. We were never like Team champs of the world or anything like that. But we had a tight squad. And it was incredible the way that you learn to handle live conversations that you put on the spot, even outside of improv. So I saw more of a life skill. When I got to university, and we didn’t have that community initially at the University of Waterloo was the first club I started in first year where I teach what I learned, and you’d bring people together. And it just worked. And I ran that for I think two semesters and then just went back into stand up, because that was the thing that I was the thing I spent the most time practising. It was just what I did, I wrote jokes, I wrote music, I remember my first gigs were all believe it or not, church communities who wanted someone to just be entertaining without offending the crowd. And that being a clean comic back then was something that just drove business for me forever. Like for ages, there is always a request in there. And when I learned that I could stand up a business around it, it, I realised that it was just a great source of income to have as a student and beyond. And it, you know, made some sizable payments to my first car, like I had no idea that you could stand up a business around it. But that’s where it came from, like just the desire to delight, create these joyful moments and bring out laughter in people is something that I’ve always admired. And it’s those moments where people are laughing, they don’t have any pain in those moments, you see the joy in their eyes. And it’s just one of those things that will always bring people together. So growing up and seeing like, the way like Eddie Murphy and all these comics out there, which is specially a guy like Robin Williams on the spot, or Jamie Foxx, just watching in Living Colour and all these shows, you’re like, Wow, this looks like a lot of fun. And I want to be a part of this world. And it feels like the rite of passage is to just keep trying things, try some things five, be fearless. Like, be yourself don’t don’t like be vulnerable. And it just it kind of work. You know, it’s a weird way of getting into that part of the story. But I think that’s the best way like I just kept trying, I started to get better. The impression started to come in from practice because it’s not something I was able to ever really do before. And so when I learned that it was something you can practice to get better at. It was just what I did.
Colin Hunter 14:23
It was amazing. I always remember a 97 I was in San Francisco working in a restaurant and one of the shifts took me to an improv where Mike McShane was there and doing improv, one of the best in his class in terms of improv, but what I was always amazed by was their resilience on the stage to bomb for three, four minutes and escape not to go well. And then suddenly to have the whole place, rocking laughing in the background. So talk to me about the failure piece of this, you know, when you’re up there, the Tumbleweed is rolling through what’s the experience like,
it’s hard to predict sometimes. But I’ll tell you my first comedy show, in club 54 out in Burlington, as a teen. And as my first time going to an actual club as an amateur and not doing private events. private events are a safe space. When you quickly read your crowd, you know what you’re dealing with, you don’t know what you’re going to get in a comedy club. And I started to go down this vein, and I believe this till this day, if you were born in the 80s, you grew up with the best TV shows. That’s it, right? Like you had the benefit of everything from the 70s and stuff before it was still in culture. So you grew up with the best stuff. So I started to go down that vein really early, like one of my opening lines, and there was a guy in the audience, and he heckled me, I was like, Oh, shit, I’ve never really dealt with that before. And it’s not so much that he was interrupting me is what he was saying. Because he was like, Oh, he’s just going to talk about all the black shows. Let me guess, roots, right roots. He wasn’t a black dude. He was a he was a white man in his middle age, like heckling an 18 year old who was out there for the first time. And so in that moment, this is when I learned that, you know, on one hand, stick to what you know, and stick to what you came with, because I responded to him, and I put him in his place. But I didn’t like how I felt doing it. And in that moment, like it kind of changed the energy with my show. I remember I forgot my lines. And I pulled out my script. Because I used to memorise things word for word, I pulled out my script, and my everybody just give me a sec. And I put it down on the soul. And I remember I had to read the first line out loud to get back on track. And the audience was gracious, they laughed intently after that. But it was my second worst show, I would say. And yeah, I was just also my first experience was just you have to kind of get up and keep going. I never really had hecklers after that, and actually don’t know why. But what I ended up doing was like just quickly finding a way to read the possibilities in the room based on what I was getting from the audience. And some of those, like initial seconds, when you’re walking out on the stage, like that first 15 seconds, you test a lot of things, and you just learned to address like adapt really quickly. I didn’t have any hecklers after that. But I’d say that was my worst show. The one that caught me off guard start a second show, though, the worst show I had was when I was in front of an audience of people, I thought it was like a sure home run, because just all the common experiences and it just it was not the case. Like I remember getting some strong Chi from a Caribbean grandma in the front row. And, oh, I’m going to address this because I don’t have any more material that is going to make this work. So I actually just had to lean right into it. That was the only way I was able to get that audience back on side. I’ll never forget those first two experiences like that there were years apart. But probably my two worst experiences of bombing on a stage ever.
Functionally, you mentioned a couple of things resonates with me on not on what you do. But in, you know that bit where you think I’ve got this, this is an audience, particularly if you’ve worked with a group of people before and you think they’re just going to find me funny, or they’re going to connect with me. And we’re going to bond and, and this is going to go fine. And if you if you’re off your game and you haven’t prepared and you haven’t you know, you’re almost overconfident. It’s that moment where you know, my biggest falls in front of audiences have been where I’ve thought I’ve got it, and then found out haven’t. And it’s always been in my mind that I’ve always got to be present in the moment and connected to the audience to do that. The second thing is this about scripting, and leadership, has it helped you in terms of arms, releasing that script, in your outside comedy piece? Has it helped you in the rest of your work? Because innovation and design thinking is, is a form of working off script, as well. So talk to us. Talk to us about that.
Caustan De Riggs 18:56
And you bring that up in such a clean segue? And like the direct answer I have is like a scripted for me is always like a starting place. You have to learn to let go of the script, whatever it is, if you’re truly trying to embrace the craft. And another way of phrasing is templates are only ever meant to get you started. If you rely on templates, you will always need a template. That’s the same thing for sending emails to clients. It’s the same thing for doing presentations. What I try encourage people to do whenever I’m in a position of leadership is to let go of templates and focus on developing reflexes, which really come from active listening, let go of your own language, like use the client’s language, if they’re giving you important terms, take the time to ask why like don’t just glance over powerful emotional moments that are happening in the conversation. And sometimes that means let go of your agenda. If you call someone and you’re trying to sell them a workshop and they tell you that they’re you know, they’re in a snowstorm and all of a sudden like just pause and like live in that space for a minute before you move on and like ask them what they have planned for the rest of the day. Get a little bit more glimpse into their world, you wouldn’t do that if you were on script. And even if you were on a script that had a question like that, you would glance over the next question and you would move on. So I learned like, it’s just, it’s all about embracing those moments when you are present in in the presence and having enough trust in the quality of the relationship that you’re you’re communicating with, to kind of just let go of, I guess, forcefully trying to drive a conversation to a scripted outcome and just follow where the the energy goes in the moment. It’s hard to explain it.
Colin Hunter 20:37
Yeah. And what I love about the concept of templates in there is that it’s almost having a framework or a point of view around what is it you know, what is it good sales call, what is a good act? How do you do them, but once you’re in that moment, you’ve got to have the confidence to be able to go off script. And then you’ve got to have the connection with the audience, as you say, to lean in to the grandmother is sitting on the, on the front rows. It is that that ability, the interesting bit for me, because we use three season here, confidence, conviction and connection. So I’ve talked about confidence, being the physicality of the vocality, to, to project and hold your own connection is the adaptability with the audience. The conviction is more about the values piece. So I’m interested in comedians on Zoom, going back to that, bringing in the concept of race and everything that’s going on there, and how, how you can do that and have the values and keep to be true to those in the face of comedy, because I think a lot of comedians are afraid of tackling anything to do with that in that space that starts conversation. So yeah, hope you don’t mind me ask it.
Caustan De Riggs 21:45
Now, that’s fine. If I go back to my frame of mind in the moment, March, April 2020. But everything stopped, like a fire kind of ignited in me. And it wasn’t the initial response that’s expecting of like, oh, shit, we’re in a global pandemic, run and buy all the toilet paper. It was, wait a minute if the world stops. So there’s this movie, it’s called Lucky number seven. And there’s a quote in and I think it’s called the Kansas City shuffle. And it’s something along the lines of when everyone looks left you go right. And I thought back, when else have a felt like this when things were shut down. And it was a pullback to 2008 2009 we had the financial crisis, which still had a global impact, but primarily like we were experiencing that North America graduated school at that time. And it was really hard to get anything done. Except when I look back at all the companies that were started during that time, WhatsApp, Uber, Instagram, I felt like I missed out big time. And I realised that in that moment of crisis, I should have apply creativity and not leaned into the fear. When the pandemic started, I immediately recognised it as an opportunity. If everyone else stops, this is time to move. What are the things that I’ve always wanted to do but did not have time or did not perceive to have time to get done. I just was kind of riding off of this life mantra at the time was just finding great people and doing great things together. And the rest will kind of just sort itself out and started across all the projects. So like that was the first part of the conviction was like, hey, like it’s time to move, what is something that you want to move on and was comedy, who were people that want to bring together that I believe in that I think we can have a great experience together. And that’s you know, how I chose my initial group. And when I saw the chemistry, as like this connection is, is powerful. I know these people individually, but they’re discovering each other. And I know it’s gonna work because of what I know about them. But seeing them come online and connect with each other week after week, it just created a kind of bond that you can’t get from a workshop you can only get from taking risks. So when, again, like when we have racism going on a really long time. But I was shocked to see a world response. And we had people watching and I’m like, wait a minute, like we have we have people’s attention right now. We should probably say something about this because I don’t feel comfortable standing up and recording jokes tonight. It’s just not what I want to do. So we opened up our zoom invite sent out a call we I think we had about 20 random people join and just they sat there listening to our life stories. And I learned a lot about people I thought I knew and what they were struggling with race or with sexism and or like all of it. And it’s like I didn’t know that people struggle that way. And that brought us closer together. So that kind of conviction at that point was like this is a group that cares about making people laugh, but it’s also a group that cares about justice and doing the right things and and fighting for people who are marginalised and that’s where I saw everyone else’s convictions come in and it just it created a connectionIn, in us that it just last like is different than any sort of project I had been involved in before. And because of that, it just built all kinds of confidence. We stopped planning questions, we stopped, you know, worrying about how shows my goal, and we would just lead into whatever was happening in the moment. But it was those initial raw discussions and willingness to kind of expose our roots that way that created a bond that, you know, I just, I haven’t, I’ve worked on a lot of entertainment projects, I haven’t seen anything like this, like I remember when Fresh Prince of Bel Air went off the year. And as watching the bond that that cast had in the last episode, and how powerfully they experienced those relationships. And then again, this year, when they did the reunion, that bond was still there. And I remember young, and I’m like I was, I see that in sports, but I’ve always wanted, I always wanted that in entertainment. Being one comedian on stage is fun, don’t get me wrong, when you have a group of people who can bounce ideas off of each other and make each other laugh that hard off of raw moments that that’s something else. So I’m not sure if I answered your question. But I tried to say all the work that you gave me, I love it.
Colin Hunter 26:11
So I gave you a template and you work with it. And you give me an answer. I think it’s it’s fascinating for me, because I think there’s a piece that a number of people over this year have have struggled to find a place to be able to talk about what’s been going on and say the right or wrong things. And I remember I’ve made a few mistakes this year, you know, saying and when COVID happening, and I’ve made an error, and I felt it was just a harmless common kind of talking about what I’m doing? Well, I’m lucky. Yeah. And somebody said, Well, thank you so lucky and got really emotional and quite angry with me about it. But in the concept of race, and gender, there’s this piece here, that’s just being able to have those rural conversations and take it back and explain or understand what people are going through is educational. So you know, fair play to you to, to bring that up and work with it in that space. It’s tough. Just want to bring us back to leadership. And because you’ve led this group, is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I just want to touch on that. Because that’s obviously there’s a purpose driven behind it to the when I look at the eclectic list you gave me to talk about DIY, entrepreneurship, real estate, coaching innovation, what’s the underlying passion as a leader you have?
Caustan De Riggs 27:31
I care a lot about making an impact in this world. I don’t know anyone that has my name, but I am named after my grandfather. And the only reason why I’m saying that, his the stories of his impact in his life, the people around them, people still talk about that till this day in Grenada and Antigua. And some of that generation, if I meet them, and I share my name like it, and if they knew him, I get treated very differently right away. His impact in the world seemed to place a responsibility to carry that name with a level of impact. And I don’t know where that came from. But it’s something that I felt like as a kid, I was a first child born after he died. I never met him. But I heard stories about him and what he did for people, so I just kind of leaned into that. There’s also an aspect of just always needing to be resourceful. My mom worked 12 hour shifts, as a nurse and everyone in my, my parents, everyone had multiple jobs, like you had to you had to hustle. And I mean that in the sense that you have to work really hard and it was instilled, you have to sometimes work twice as hard to get this to the same level as people who don’t look like you. So there’s a drive to create impact. There’s a drive to be resourceful and use whatever resources you have around you to do something, you know, whether it’s like I was selling chocolates as a kid and selling those out, and you’re taking the money back to school and realising Hey, I might be good in sales, like you take an inventory of what works for you really early. And then what connected me to others was when I started to get questions from people about how the heck I was able to generate income, doing comedy as a self manage person at my age, I started to show people what that looks like. And I talked to them in the context of things they were passionate about. And when I saw that I was able to help people move from their own passions into like a purpose towards their passions. I realised that that was a skill that was a life skill and whether I wanted to apply it in, I’m going to go learn how to be a property manager for the first time and when to dive in and when to figure this out. Or I’m going to go learn how to, you know, DIY renovations or anything. I’m going to try and do something new every weekend. I want to lean into that. I found that whatever project that was in it was always the same set of skills. Why are we doing this? Does it have a meaningful impact? Can I find great people to work on this with me in a way where it also benefits their career? And can we align under a common vision and many you get those things done, money will always show up. And impact is not soon. It’s like it’s soon to follow. So I think I might be off script here,
Colin Hunter 30:18
but I’m hearing impact, I’m hearing hustle. And I’m hearing a great thing in here, which resonates with me, which is build it and they will come. So that the you know, the success, or the money will come if you do what you’re passionate about and what you believe it and hold true to it, despite the setbacks, but there’s hard work in there as well.
Caustan De Riggs 30:42
That’s what I forgot to get into, which is the thing like if you are going to ask anything of other people, you need to be prepared to do twice as much as work yourself, like you have to model the behaviour you’re looking for. And I think the thing that was most rewarding for me as a personal skill development, when I just look at comedians on Zoom, so I can get on the phone and talk to people. I’m not afraid of talking, I can have a conversation, but facilitating conversations that are uncomfortable, I didn’t know I can do that. And I didn’t know I be able to do that well and create that kind of environment to handle those painful discussions. I learned how to run a social channel. I mean, I don’t have a crazy amount of followers. But like I really feel good about the content we put out I learned how to edit video, I learned how to do some of the graphic design some of it by hand, some of it through other apps, like you just find ways of getting things done. And some of the times of feedback where people like you were doing all this behind the scenes work and editing and stuff yourself for how long am I good half of the last year until I brought someone else in to help with the video editing just because my other projects picked up. But what I realised is like the team was always like when they showed up, they almost worked twice as hard because they knew how much work I’d have to do behind the scenes to get it done. And it’s like they kind of just instinctively understood that, like, here’s someone who’s putting their time in, he’ll edit out most of what he says to make sure that other people have platform and he balances it out. And he does that week after week. And when people see that you’re willing to do the level of detail in the work, I think it is easier for people to participate and find ways of helping you along the way. And it’s not perfect. There’s lots of areas I still need help with in any project of mine. But I find when you are willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work and fight it out over a long period of time. Like some of these things that I’m living in the blessings of now I’ve been fighting and working my ass off for for legitimately half my life. Nothing’s overnight, people kind of see when those moments where you reach a goal, you might have the form moving on to the next and not realise the kind of hard work it takes to get there. Others however, had been along and has seen the journey. And in the same way where I’m inspired to get things done, because I’ve seen how hard people around me have worked to launch all kinds of passion projects over the pandemic. It’s just a never ending cycle. You work hard. Your hard work inspires others, other people’s hard work and commitment inspires you. And when those are the people that are surrounding you, you are not going backwards at all. That’s the exciting thing.
Colin Hunter 33:24
Love the more I also, you know, the better the Kefalonia centres. But what I love about over the last 12 months is that people have started to look into what they’re passionate about. But also some people have been forced. I mean, we were forced to go virtual, I always swore that I would always be face to face as a business for our developments. And suddenly, we had to go virtual and we went there. But actually what got me through which is resonating with your story is the team arounds coming in and groups of facilitators getting together and sharing best practice hard work about what what would work best in virtual but I think a lot of us have started it almost going on the improv side, when my first virtual session was definitely improved and know what really hell I was doing when I was first doing it. But there’s that learning and that partnership with the people around us has been very successful. And I wondered if one of the things that we you know, I have in my head is going to move my CoO but also some other of my mentors is this focus not sprinkle concept, which is I tend to love bright, shiny new objects, new new topics, new product, new ways of working new things in my life. And I’m trying to work on this concept of getting more focus and focusing on one or two things. So if you had to pick one of the things that you’re working on and say, This is what I am passionate about, and this is the one that would keep above all others. What’s crib all the things that you do at the moment, would it be?
Caustan De Riggs 34:56
Interesting question. They may not have the perfect dance for it, because the way that I’ve, when you say focus and not sprinkle. I mean, those are powerful lessons to learn and sooner you learn them, you can be more effective. And you hear people say comments like, write down the top five things you want to do on your, in your life, choose the first one and cross out the rest. So they’re not distracting you. Yeah, I never resonated with that, you can tell by the list of things that I gave you that I like to have diverse interests, my way of focusing is to set up very automatic systems and triggers to always move something forward. Sure, it might take me an extra couple years, but everything is going to eventually come to a level of permission, and it’s time. And like, I’ve had content with that, whether that was an investment strategy, or saving strategy towards purchasing a home or, you know, chipping away at a project that I knew that eventually launch in a couple years. Like it’s that has been how I’ve been able to get by if I were to choose one right now. Like, it’s almost like I have to reconfigure a system that’s just been serving me well, like one of the questions I often get is like, how the hell do you handle so much work like your work ethic? And like, you look rested? And like yeah, like I have personal systems built in to help myself and I boundaries, but I’m always working on something to move things forward. And I’m okay with that. I think if I just do one thing, I actually might get bored. But everyone’s different, right? Like this is part of what drives me is having an understanding of a little bit of a lot of things so that I’m always a bit connected. And people fit, you know, jack of all trades, master of none. And like, I would rather aim for a jack of all trades, master of some, like as a directional goal, like always be learning always be trying something. And I sometimes worry that if I really just focus on one thing, and remove myself from some of the outside influences that I have access to just from my experiment on, I feel like I’d miss moments to create impact. So maybe not right now.
Colin Hunter 37:09
But you see, I love that answer. Because there was something you said earlier that, for me resonated, which is you’ve got your personal things that you do in your life to keep your energy and keep you motivated. Another piece of you know, a resume is why people say so how do you do everything you do, you’ve read the book, your brain, podcasts, you’re running business, but there’s something about variety in them. But there’s also something about in the playground concept about having a go at things and, and testing things out and experimenting with things. And that’s powerful to me. But I think the biggest thing I’ve always got in my career is a couple of things. One is exercise suddenly came in and starting to do triathlons really helped me in terms of discipline and mind. But meditation was the second bit so we all have our systems that will help us and if that’s our passion, keep our passion going. But work the system’s behind them to keep you in good energy. I love that.
Caustan De Riggs 38:04
Very good, sir. So I just got one particular area I want to focus on just towards the end of our conversation. And it’s something that I want to link the improv and I want to link purpose around impacts. And if you had to, to now just think about the future. And thinking about five years time, coming back to yourself now and say, what would be the messages from that five years older person to you now, in the current environment, the current worlds,
there’s always the perseverance aspects, the keep going. But I have an analogue for this, when the pandemic started, I thought years back to 2008 2009, that some of the stuff I wish I had told myself, then I made sure I put into practice now. And I was at the pace of change that we’re seeing in technology. I would say don’t even get comfortable on Zoom. Probably don’t quote me on this, but at the pace, things are changing. And you think about comments, you hear about, you know, Zoom fatigue, like, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in five years or less, you know, most of our meetings were either like real in person human experiences. Because, you know, we’ve been traumatised by these moments, or a blend of like augmented and virtual reality and business tools in that space. Like what happens when your flip chart is no longer on a whiteboard on your computer or, you know, on an analogue chart beside you really leaning into that sort of possibility and thinking in that space is something that I would say I would always want myself to do. I would ask myself to look back into these moments now and pay attention for those opportunities. I would say there are a lot of horrible things happening in the news, but if directionally all the media is kind of focusing in one direction and what’s happening on the other side and get really curious about it, and See where you might find some opportunities to either create impact or to help the situation. So I think most of the advice might be around that, and just, you know, permission to. So just recognise that right now, nobody is at their best like, nobody is. And I think that’s okay. But I think after this, if not already, investing time, or business resources, or creating business models to help people connect again, in human ways for to help people get over the roots, or the I don’t have the right word for it, trauma might be excessive. But there’s an experience happening globally right now that has taken people so far out of their comfort zone. And in some cases, there’s a lot of places that where healing still needs to happen. And there’s other places where people have had wild successes. And it’s those moments where we still have healing that needs to get addressed, I would love to see more of an acceptance in that when we talk about the mental health crisis. But it’s probably more than that. It’s probably like a consciousness shift or something. And there’s a there’s a deeper connection behind all of it. And I would love to see more conversation about that. And if in five years, the thing that I needed to tell myself was to bring more of that human experience and conversation into everything you do, whether it’s humour, or when you’re sitting in front of a fortune 500 executives, like just do that, and the rest will come.
Colin Hunter 41:27
I couldn’t think of somebody who could do that better than you do. So it’s, it’s been a pleasure. Just remind folks about where they can hear more about you and comedians on Zoom.
Caustan De Riggs 41:38
Well, folks, if you’re not tired of hearing me talk yet and you still have boring you then I would go to comedians on Zoom. that’s all one word. You can find it on YouTube, or on Instagram, the whole team, everyone also has their own side projects. So click around their profiles, and you’ll learn some pretty neat things. Often folks are not just one thing. And I love that we can share that all about each other.
Colin Hunter 42:02
So it’s always a pleasure to talk to thank you for coming on today. Talk to everybody and look forward to welcome you back at some point maybe to talk about when we’re out of the pandemic, maybe the Think about where whether those visions of what you think might happen and the human centred side is starting to come to fruition or what we need to do about it. Causton for a pleasure, sir. Thank you. Thanks, Colin.
Who is amazed spotter Cray conversation, always amazed about how much I learn more about people just when you get that space and podcast series has been a great space for me to ask some questions that people already know, but find out a bit more. And some of the courses background I didn’t know is his relationship with his father hearing about his father. But also some of the things that he believes in strongly in his passions, which are the hinter. But I I got a different view of today. So hopefully enjoyed that strong views around Black Lives Matters, race, but also looking at how we use comedy and improvisational comedy to drive a difference in society. And for me, it is just the start of how we use those types of mediums to work to give people an immersive chance to make mistakes to learn and how to have those difficult conversations. So of course, and thank you very much for your time. Hope you enjoyed it, but for to welcome you back another episode of the leadership tales podcast.