In 2005, Casper Berry became a trainer for the company The Mind Gym where he delivered over 400 sessions to 100 companies; at the same time, he began commentating on TV poker games, delivering over 2,000 hours of live broadcasting. He was then asked to be a poker advisor on the James Bond movie Casino Royale (2006).
He then went at it on his own to become one of the best-known business speakers in the UK. He has delivered over 2,000 speeches for over 500 companies in over 30 countries.
His presentations mainly focus on the need to embrace uncertainty and take calculated risks in order to get ahead and success. He is very inspirational and stimulates change in any sector with his positive attitude and energetic style.
Caspar Berry Keynote Talks
CASPAR BERRY – RISK TAKING AND DECISION MAKING IN POKER, BUSINESS AND LIFE
The “original and genuine” keynote speech in 45, 60 or 90 minute forms.
It looks at how a decision is defined and how risk is defined, and asks us how we make our decisions and whether we could make them differently or improve upon them. It identifies and defines the origins of fear and failure and concludes by advocating for a technique that embraces this fear and motivates us to make more courageous decisions.
CASPAR BERRY – LUCKY IN BUSINESS, LUCKY IN LIFE
This speech communicates a powerful and effective message about how we approach life and how lucky we all really are. It takes inspiration from Steven Covey’s circles of influence and control, and a host of other subject areas – from the lottery to the Holocaust – to motivate people to change the focus of their thinking away from what is disempowering towards that which is proactive.
CASPAR BERRY – INNOVATION, CREATIVITY AND THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
The processes of innovation and creativity require hundreds of failures in order to create success. And more importantly, companies that innovate are better equipped to survive long-term changes than those that do not. Caspar uses the metaphor of Darwinian evolution to show that the most brilliant system of adaptation to change – evolution – fails millions of time in order to create the one mutation that facilitates the survival of the species. In a world of change, thriving is not enough, we must now constantly adapt to survive.
CASPAR BERRY – DECISIVE LEADERSHIP: COURAGE, BRAVERY AND PERSPECTIVE
What do great leaders do when they make decisions?
Caspar doesn’t claim to be a great leader, in fact he makes the point that it’s very difficult to make truly great decisions because they inevitably run the risk of personal sacrifice which is, by definition, terrifying. Ultimately, this looks at what courage and bravery are, and uses material like the 7/7 testimonials (the extraordinary selflessness of a few random, normal people caught up in a disaster) to ask whether we all have courage within us. It also explores the belief that leaders are not born or made but the product of circumstance and humanity.
CASPAR BERRY – EMBRACING UNCERTAINTY: HOW TO STEP INTO THE UNKNOWN
In many ways, one of Caspar’s most fascinating and emotional of all his creations and highly relevant to business today.
It starts by examining the scientific source of uncertainty before looking at the effect on our economy, psychology and culture. It incorporates Black Swans and principles of feedback and fractal mathematics, before coming to a stunning conclusion: a certain world would be a boring one! In fact, we realise when we conceive of this, that the decision-making process itself is about constant engagement with uncertainty and it is this which gives us meaning as human beings. We understand that self-actualisation itself, that is the fulfilment of our potential on this planet, can only come from exposure to uncertainty. It is the way in which we rise to the challenge of the unknown that defines who we are.
CASPAR BERRY – JUDGEMENT AND INTUITION: HOW MUCH WE REALLY KNOW WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING
Caspar uses this speech to see just how powerful our intuition is before applying it to all sorts of other areas of life including poker and business. It references Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, but takes the principles further by placing ‘judgement’ into the context of the decision-making process as a whole. It shows people when intuition is born – like when Fangio uses it to avoid death – and when it is bad – when we make bad assessments of how safe it is to sunbathe. Crucially it shows us how we can make better decisions in the future, through anecdote, finding and fact.
CASPAR BERRY – RATIONALITY AND EXPERT EXPERTISE: HOW WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW CAN KILL US
This speech looks in more detail at all the other emotional distortions to which we fall victim.
We are scared of flying when the most dangerous part of taking a flight is the car journey to the airport, and we are all terrified of a terrorist attack when we’re 1,000 times more like to die from a stroke. This speech exposes many of the decisions we rationalise in business to be nonsense, but it also touches on the decisions we make in life which don’t serve of very well at all. Based on the science of behavioural economics, there is a health component to this (about how reckless apparently risk-averse people are when it comes to diet) which ties in neatly with other wellness concepts.
CASPAR BERRY – MOTIVATING, NUDGING, INFLUENCING AND PERSUADING
This speech is about why we do what we do.
Specifically, this speech is aimed at people who have to motivate and influence others (salespeople and managers) in order to communicate the kinds of things which stimulate our subconscious mind to do things differently.
Why are we more inclined to believe a man in a white coat?
What on earth is it that motivates people even more than money?
What does a bluffer do to make themselves more convincing? And how can we guard against them?
Drawing on a popular body of work which is known by many (but read by few) this speech makes the subject funny and engaging.
Each of Caspar’s speeches can be delivered in as little as 20 or 30 minute sessions, up to 2-3 hour sessions, and if appropriate, whole-day sessions. About 30% of his work is to after-dinner groups who want a business-relevant message delivered alongside a lot of gags in 25 minutes, utilising both verbal and visual humour which is suitable for an international audience. Also, about 40% of his work still involves actually playing poker either within or after the presentation.
He can also deliver practical and interactive workshops and seminars. A central theme running through all of Caspar’s work is to give people a better understanding of how risk and uncertainty work playing poker as a metaphor to take into their personal and professional lives.
He has presented workshops on:
– Leadership, Decision Making and the Art of Taking Calculated Risks
– Innovating and Communicating
– Body Language
The entire body of Caspar’s work essentially covers four stages:
– The Uncertainty: Underpinning everything is the idea that the world is much more uncertain than we like to think. The reason we don’t like to acknowledge that is because it scares us, but studies show that accepting this can help us make better decisions.
– The Economics: The implications of this uncertainty are quite profound. They are what a poker player learns at the beginning, because of course, in poker the uncertainty is obvious and so one needs to embrace it. The maths which describes this uncertainty reveals a number of counterintuitive implications: it shows that some things which may feel reasonable are in not and other things which may feel risky are much better than they first appear. These messages – while logically demonstrable – are actually quite difficult to take on board at first, which is why we need to explain…
– The Psychology: Humans don’t like to fail. We’re loss and risk averse and we’ve built companies and a legal system based on fulfilling this inbuilt need for success. So, to maximise returns on investment we have to override the way we’re psychologically wired.
– The Culture: At the end of each session, each individual; has been on a journey of understanding why they’re not innately hardwired for success. But that doesn’t matter if people aren’t culturally re-wired to move forwards with a new mindset.
It is crucial to state that Caspar does not claim to be an expert in all these areas, but looks at them through the prism of decision making, risk taking and resource allocation.
Over the years, Caspar has begun to mentor aspiring speakers, focussing on the creation of great content. He has also started to develop talks around the theme of truth and lies. Entitled “How To Tell The Truth”, he uses the metaphor of bluffing in poker to show how bad we are at telling when someone is lying (in poker and in life), for the surprising reason that we lie to each other an astonishing amount of time.
CASPAR BERRY CLIENTS
Accenture, AIA, AON, ASDA, Audi, AXA, BAA, Bank of Canada, Barclays, BP, BT, BSkyB, British Airways, Castrol, CISCO, Citigroup, Deloitte, Deutsche, Diageo, E&Y, eBay, E.ON, ESSO, GASSCO, G4S, Google, HP, HSBC, IBM, KPMG, Morgan Stanley, NEC, Network Rail, O2, Ogilvy, Orange, PayPal, Pepsico, Premier Foods, Procter & Gamble, RBS, Roche, Rothschilds, Sage, Sainsburys, Shell, Siemens, SONY, Tesco, Visa, Western Union, Zurich
Call +44 1753 439 289 or email Great British Speakers now to book motivational speaker Caspar Berry for your corporate event.
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