In Your Shoes - Gavin Oattes

“Inspirational”, “Mind-Blowing”, “Hilarious” and “Barn-Storming” are just a few of the words used by clients to describe Gavin Oattes and his unique ability to entertain, enlighten and educate an audience.  

Gavin is an international keynote speaker, award winning comedian, children’s author and former Young Entrepreneur of the Year.  Although he spends much of his time speaking to business leaders and directors of some of the world’s leading organisations, Gavin’s true inspiration for what he does comes from where he started out his career… primary school teaching.

He’s a firm believer that we as adults can be every bit as inspired by young children as they can by us grown-ups. Gavin transports his audience back to when they were just 5 years of age, a time when we feared nothing and embraced everything. You will laugh, you will cry, you will feel and you will never eat broccoli in the same way again!

Over the past decade, Gavin has worked with literally hundreds of thousands of people and is now regarded as one the most talented and sought after speakers in the UK.

Recent Feedback

“The rock star of inspirational speaking” – Aberdeen City Council

“Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, very impressed. Gavin nailed.” – Scottish Power

Gavin received a satisfaction rating of 98%, pretty impressive!” – Castle Rock Edinvar

Fanning the Flames

I love Monday’s, I always approach them with excitement for the new week ahead. I have no time for anyone who chooses their mood based on the day of the week.

Today was a rather unique day for me as I launched a brand-new event for Scotland’s young people. Fire Up Scotland is a free event of inspiration to be held at the SSE Hydro in September featuring incredible speakers and performers. After only one day we had 8700 registered for tickets, a truly overwhelming and somewhat unexpected response. There’s always that feeling of the unknown and all the usual “what if’s?” but it already looks like we’re going to fill the whole place.

In amongst all the excitement of launching FUS, I have had a client meeting in Edinburgh about a conference I’m hosting for them later this year and two conference calls with clients also about upcoming events. Tonight I’m packing for London and spending time with my kids as I won’t see them until Friday morning. This is the part of my job I find the most challenging, one night away is fine, two is tough, any more and it hurts.

Build it, they will come – Feeling Like a Rockstar

Today was meant to be a straight forward day of travel and setting up our exhibition stand at the CIPD Learning and Development Show in London.

However, just as I was about to step on the plane in Edinburgh I received a phone call telling me that Fire Up Scotland had not only hit but smashed its 12,000 people target. It’s not every day you fill the Hydro! I had to make the decision to close registration after only 2 days! What a feeling! Completely unexpected but I’ll take it!

We arrived in London and headed for the Olympia. Fortunately, all our bits and pieces had arrived ahead of us and we got to work building and decorating our exhibition stand in prep for Wednesday and Thursday. Having finished our set up our next priority was Dim Sum.

Selling and Picnics

A full day exhibiting at CIPD L&D show in London. These events can be great for Tree of Knowledge, a real chance to meet new people and really share all that we do. Events like this can often lead to many new and exciting projects. At times they can also be mind numbingly boring and lead to nothing. My approach is that we’ve invested the money so turn up and give it everything.

We met some lovely people today who showed real interest in bringing TOK into their workplaces. We had many discussions around culture, vision, values, behaviours, leadership and of course the importance of fun in the workplace. The reality is we won’t know how successful the show has been for us for another few weeks, maybe even months.

Highlight of my day was having a picnic at our stand with compete strangers as I delivered a spontaneous session around play and rediscovering your inner child. Back tomorrow!

Working it!

I’m writing this on the tube after full day of exhibiting in London at CIPD L&D Show. We’ve met so many lovely people from all over the world and it’s been a joy to share with them all what we do at TOK. Our brand new leadership programme VIBE definitely seemed to be what caught the eye of many delegates. Everyone is looking for something different, something edgy that truly has impact on their people and that’s exactly what we do. We also sold 20 copies of SHINE today, here’s hoping people enjoy it. We are big fans at TOK of Random Acts of Kindness and decided to leave several copies of SHINE all over London with lovely little messages in each.

Won’t be home tonight until about midnight but tomorrow I see my kids. Can’t wait to see their faces.


Friday Feeling

So, our plane last night from London was delayed and I didn’t actually get home until the wee hours of this morning. I’m feeling tired as I write this but I’m absolutely buzzing from a hugely exciting and varied week.

Most importantly, I saw my kids. They were over the moon to see me and both spoke at a million miles an hour as they informed me of absolutely every single thing they’ve done in the last few days.

I needed to be in the office this morning for 8:30am. A morning of meetings, emailing and generally catching up after having been away.

The buzz around Fire Up Scotland is continuing to grow with people enquiring about potential sponsorship opportunities. I still can’t really believe we managed to fill the Hydro!

My afternoon will involve meeting our Leadership team at Tree of Knowledge to review our new strategy that we implemented just a few months back. We are going through an incredibly exciting period of growth and we’re keen to ensure that we’re on it and all areas of the business are firing on all cylinders.

Family time.

Today is all about my wife and kids. Fun, walks, food and more food.

Pokémon and Fire in the Belly

My son is obsessed with Pokémon. He joined an official Pokémon league in Edinburgh earlier this year and I go with him each week. I try really hard every week to learn something new about Pokémon battles but I’m really terrible at it, so I tend to sit in the corner and write new content for my speeches.

Today however, I am doing everything I can to ensure a fair allocation of tickets to all schools who have registered for Fire Up Scotland. I think it’s only right that every school who has applied get to go. They might not get the full amount they want but the more schools the better!