More About Sam Conniff

Sam Conniff’s career began as a teenager running raves. He enlisted Banksy and Shepard Fairey as designers for what became the Bafta-winning creative agency Don’t Panic.

He then founded the world renowned social enterprise Livity, where he won Agency of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Business of the Year, EY Entrepreneur of the Year, the Queen’s Award, and commendations from multiple UK Prime Ministers.

Sam Conniff | Books

Sam has published several bestselling books, including:

– Be More Pirate (2018) reveals the radical strategies of Golden Age pirates and updates them into clear solutions for making your mark in the 21st Century.
– How to Be More Pirate (2020): From healthcare to education to big business, mutiny in Manchester to the climate pirates of the Caribbean, Sam captures their applied wisdom.
– The Uncertainty Toolkit: How to Feel Calmer, Happier, and More Confident (2026) co-written with Katherine Templar Lewis. This book is based on cutting-edge science, underpinned by personal accounts from ex-prisoners, former addicts, refugees, gangland bosses, and hostages, who have channelled their experience of extreme ambiguity into mainstream world success.
– Do You: A User Manual for Knowing, Liking, and Being Yourself (2028) co-written with Katherine Templar Lewis.

He also wrote Unicorn Theory (2021) after his daughter asked him to write her a book about unicorns.

Sam Conniff | Podcasts

Sam has appeared as a guest on several business podcasts, including:

– The Weekly Take: Sam explores how pirate-inspired thinking and resolute action can help leaders navigate uncertainty, unlock innovation, and lead with courage amid change.
– Think with Google Firestarters: Sam describes how we can turn uncertainty into a catalyst for innovation, learning, and change.
– The Squiggly Careers: Sam discusses what makes uncertainty so hard for our brains to process and how the unknown stunts our creativity and stalls our progress.
– Rebel Rebel: Sam opens up about his personal struggles and triumphs, revealing how he found clarity in uncertain times and the driving force behind his mission to encourage others to embrace their inner pirate
– The Learning Hack: Sam and fellow guest Katherine bring their learning in neuroscience, psychology, history, and social entrepreneurship to bear in helping organisations and individuals improve uncertainty tolerance.
– The Bookkeeper: Sam discusses how embracing pirate-like qualities can enable change and growth.
– The Future is How: Sam explores what it truly means to live and lead in uncertain times.
– The Secret Leaders: Sam breaks down the mental models and techniques that can help you find stillness and comfort in the face of uncertainty.
– The Jon Richardson and The Futurenauts: Sam dives into one of the root causes of all our terrible decision making – our inability to tolerate uncertainty.
– IDEO Creative Confidence: Sam talks about the data behind what he calls the decisiveness crisis, why senior leadership teams are the most likely layer in most organisations to get uncertainty wrong.
– Upping Your Elvis: Sam has a very thought provoking conversation about identity, culture, and the hidden rules we all live by.
– Invisible Work: Sam dismantles how fear dysregulates our brains and bodies.

Sam Conniff | Corporate

Sam has created Hard as Nails, a cutting-edge campaign and ‘empathy engine’ that utilises behavioural science to measurably increase healthy masculinity, challenge harmful stereotypes, and redefine leadership.

Sam Conniff | Speaking Topics

– Leadership
– Mindset
– Resilience
– Psychology
– Professional Rule Breaking
– Professional Rule Breaking vs AI
– Rewriting Rules
– Navigating Change
– Managing Uncertainty
– Redefining Leadership
– Teamwork
– Culture
– Overcoming Adversity
– Mental Health
– Managing People

Sam Conniff | Keynotes

Professional Rule Breaking vs Robots: Sam offers a grounded perspective on what’s really going on beneath the noise. Rather than another talk about tools, trends, or tactics, he explores why compliance has quietly become the default response to automation, and why that loss of confidence, curiosity, and judgement is the bigger risk.

Key Features:

– A reframing of AI from a compliance challenge to a judgement challenge
– A practical, psychologically grounded take on rule breaking as responsibility
– Interactive prompts that help audiences think differently, not just harder
– A confidence-building lens on curiosity, discernment, and decision making
– An energising alternative to hype, fear, and AI fatigue

Outcomes:

– Greater confidence and curiosity around AI and automation
– A clearer understanding of when rules serve progress and when they block it
– Practical mental tools that transfer beyond technology into leadership and work
– A renewed sense of agency, optimism, and momentum in the face of change

Redefining Leadership: A keynote that challenges outdated ideas of strength and offers a new blueprint for modern leadership grounded in emotional fluency, identity, and courage. Based on his social experiment ‘Hard as Nails’, he explores how redefining masculinity isn’t just a social issue, it’s a leadership advantage. Perfect for leadership offsites and internal culture days, organisations seeking to modernise their view of strength, and environments where emotional honest is undervalued but needed.

Key Features:

– Real stories from frontline workers, fathers, creatives, and CEOs
– Anonymous data collected from the campaign’s 300+ participants
– A brave, unusual, and disarming format

Takeaways:

– A framework for emotional leadership in high-pressure roles
– New language for identity, values, and integrity at work
– How to build teams where strength looks different, but performs better

Be More Pirate: Based on his bestselling book, this session helps audiences understand how to rewrite the rules – not just break them – and provides practical tools for driving cultural change from within. Perfect for innovation, culture, and strategy teams, leadership teams, and organisations undergoing reorganisation.

Key Features:

– A five-step “pirate code” framework for positive rebellion
– Live case studies from Pirate communities in business, education, and activism

Takeaways:

– How to identify and challenge broken rules in your team and industry
– How to build a movement from the inside out
– Tools to turn rebellion into strategy, and values into action

Navigating Uncertainty and the Uncertainty Toolkit: An interactive session that reframes a team’s relationship with uncertainty and change. Backed by the world’s largest study into uncertainty, Sam combines storytelling and science, leading the audience with a measurable increase in their Uncertainty Tolerance and practical tools.

Key Features:

– Interactive ‘live’ experiments
– Exclusive data and insights from global research
– Case studies of ex-smugglers, refugees, gang leaders, etc.

Takeaways:

– The Psychology of Uncertainty Tolerance
– Tools for decision-making and problem-solving in the unknown
– A unique and proven methodology for transforming uncertainty

Sam Conniff | Awards

– 2007: Appointed as one of 25 Social Enterprise Ambassadors for the UK Government
– 2008: Had a chapter dedicated to him in former Prime Minster Gordon Brown’s book
– 2009: Named as one of the UK’s 50 New Radicals in The Observer
– 2010: Awarded UK Social Entrepreneur in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards
– 2011: Livity receives The Queen’s Award for Enterprise and Innovation
– 2011: Big Society Award, nominated by former Prime Minister David Cameron
– 2012: Livity wins Best Marketing Agency at Marketing Agencies Association Awards.
– 2012: Livity wins Campaign of the Year at Marketing Agencies Association Awards.
– 2013: Don’t Panic wins a Bafta for the Revolution Will Be Televised
– 2014: Named on the Happy List, the people making the UK Happier
– 2014: Named on the Maserati 100, the people helping the UK’s entrepreneurs
– 2015: Livity wins Social Enterprise of the Year at the National Business Awards
– 2016: Don’t Panic wins Gold at Cannes
– 2017: Livity becomes the first agency to win Grand Prix at BIMA Awards
– 2018: Awarded CSR Leader of the Year at Global CSR Awards
– 2020: Awarded an MBE for services to young people, but declined

Call +44 1753 439 289 or email Great British Speakers now to book Sam Conniff for your next live event.

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