Features / stuart goldsmith
‘We can’t do our jobs without the ability to crash and burn and pick ourselves back up’
Stuart Goldsmith has spent his entire career avoiding the conventional world of work, so it’s perhaps ironic that he is now turning his hand to helping companies.
The award-winning comedian and podcaster says his “absolute lack of connection to business” is actually an advantage in the roles that see him go into workplaces to deliver training sessions on resilience and help recharge efforts on climate and sustainability.
It’s a far cry from the back rooms and comedy venues where Stuart honed his craft but he says the way he has pivoted his career actually makes a lot of sense.
“I realised the lessons comedians learned and how they cope can be applied to anything,” explains the comedian, who lives in south Bristol.
“Resilience is learnable, it’s not innate. All the comedians I know, we have all learned to cultivate our resilience in order to achieve what we want to achieve, and you learn it best through struggle.
“We just cannot do our jobs without the ability to crash and burn and pick ourselves back up.”
From Circomedia-trained street performer to stand up comic, to interviewer, Stuart first realised there could be a niche in the market for helping businesses build resilience through his podcast audience.
Since 2012, he has been interviewing the funniest people in the world about how they do their jobs and how they cope with challenges.
People who listened to the podcast, The Comedian’s Comedian, started getting in touch to say they found the insights from interviewees hugely helpful in their own line of work. From dentists to hostage negotiators (“that’s a real example”), people wanted to know more about how they could apply the skills comedians use every day to their own situation.
Stuart “got some brilliant advice from brilliant people” and started approaching company bosses to speak about how he could help them build resilience from a completely fresh perspective.
The comedian has gone on to bring his unique take on resilience to big name companies around the world, including HG Capital, Deloitte, Santander, Softwire, Mimecast, Sainsbury’s, LEGO, eBay, Comic Relief, BBC, Celsus, UKTV, and The Royal British Legion.
Having realised there could be a role for comedy in solving serious business challenges, Stuart turned his attention to an even bigger issue – climate change.
Having realised there could be a role for comedy in solving serious business challenges, Stuart Goldsmith turned his attention to an even bigger issue – climate change
His climate crisis comedy show, Spoilers, won best show 2023 at the Leicester Comedy Festival, was one of the best reviewed gigs at the Edinburgh Fringe and had a run at the prestigious Soho Theatre in November.
But it took a lot of work to get to that success.
“The show itself was a year and a half of dying on my arse in comedy clubs trying to talk about the climate crisis,” says Stuart wryly.
“My job is to say the unsayable and the unsayable is ‘oh my God, the climate crisis is so much worse than I’m hearing about,’” he continues, saying that he went through a journey of understanding and learning about the climate crisis in order to write the show.
As well as getting the climate crisis to be talked about in mainstream entertainment, Stuart wanted to see if he could help businesses in a way that was similar to the resilience training he offers.
“First, I had to learn about it so I started talking to people in corporate sustainability and I started to learn how much was going on and what people need,” says the dad-of-two.
“What I now offer to businesses is not so much a training session, but a tailored version of the show.”
“We just cannot do our jobs without the ability to crash and burn and pick ourselves back up” – Stuart Goldsmith
Through his work, Stuart is able to get business leaders, consultants and employees to have difficult conversations about climate change in a completely different way. And one thing he’s learned along the way is that feelings of guilt about your own climate actions shouldn’t stand in the way of efforts to make a positive difference.
“Actually, it’s in the interests of the fossil fuel companies that we all wait until we feel good enough to act,” Stuart tells Bristol24/7.
He adds: “The challenges that the climate presents us all are an enormous opportunity to change everything for the better. Business as normal isn’t going to be business as normal anymore – so get there first.”
Find out more about Stuart’s work with businesses via www.stuartgoldsmith.com. Listen to the latest episode of The Comedian’s Comedian via www.stuartgoldsmith.com/podcast.
All photos: Matt Crockett
Read next:
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
