Episode #242 Overcome Your Fear Of Public Speaking With Keith Blakemore-Noble

Transcript

– Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Explode Your Expert Biz Show I’m here with my good friend Keith Blakemore-Noble. How you doing, Keith?

– I am fabulous as always Simone, lovely to catch you again.

– Fantastic, you always look super smart and dapper everywhere you go, I always love your style, man. So it has been a while, man. You’ve been a guest on this show about a year ago and also as well we’ve been knowing each other now for around five years, six years, six years I think.

– Something like that, yeah .

– So it’s great to reconnect and to talk about what’s something that effects all entrepreneurs? Whether they like to admit it or not . And we’re talking about the topics of fears. So before we get into fears, and in particular stage fright and how to overcome that. What got you to this point? What got you so passionate about helping other entrepreneurs overcome their fears?

– Great question, I think really it boils down to the fact that it’s a journey that I’ve had to go through myself. I know what it’s like to be terrified of these things and I know that sheer relief you get in overcoming it. And the huge opportunities that open up to do the things you wanna love doing once you can conquer them so the fact that I got myself through that, understand how we can do that and from there the logical step was use that to start helping other people to achieve the same. That’s it in a nutshell.

– And so you were not super confident when you started your speaking career?

– Oh no, no, quite the reverse. For the first 40 years or so of life I was painfully shy. I used to hate, I was terrified of the thought of even connecting with people or speaking with strangers let alone standing up on stage in front of an audience which was quite a problem given that my, when I was going up one of the biggest thing I wanted to be was a performer entertainer. But being terrified of the thought of being in front of people completely ruled that out. So I took the logical step, I went into a career in IT instead

– Where you didn’t have to talk to people

– Exactly Exactly, so that kind of put car wash and those things for far too long ’til eventually it kinda all came to a head. I went to a Christmas party with a group of people who I thought I knew ’cause I knew them from speaking online from behind the keyboard. I thought, how hard can it be to meet them in real life. And I got there and found out exactly how hard it was. To cut a long story short, I had a full panic attack. I locked myself in the toilets for about half an hour while I was having this panic attack. This was within maybe 10 minutes of arriving there. Once I calmed down and I fled, didn’t even stop to get my coat ’cause that would of meant speaking to someone. I fled and didn’t stop running until I was safely on the train. And this must of been a couple of miles and you know me, Simone, I don’t run. I avoid physical exertion. Such a thing, the terror I had. I literally ran. All these stupid things going through my head. Oh God, they’re gonna follow me, they’re gonna try and drag me back to the party. Of course, nobody’s going to. But when you get in that sort of state, all these fears really, really build up. And so at that point, I sat there and I was thinking to myself look, you can not go through life with this fear. If you carry on like this without doing something about it, what’s your life gonna be like in five, 10 years time. And I was looking at that and I was thinking well, it’s gonna suck even more than it does now. And then that was the point I decided, you have to do something, you have to do something now. If you’re not gonna do it now, you’re never gonna do it.

– And so what do you do to change it? What was the first catalyst for you to change this fear that you had?

– For me, the catalyst was by chance, coincidence, whatever you wanna call it, somebody happened to be in town a short while in to doing one of these weekend introduction breakthrough, weekend things. And the main thing that they were selling on the back of it was NLP and hypnosis training. Hypnosis had been something again I was interested in as a young child but I kind of put that all to one side when I was doing IT. So I went to that weekend seminar. Really enjoyed the stuff. Saw enough to think, you know this is working. This stuff actually works. Signed up for all the trainings that they had. Fully emersed myself. Don’t do things by half, fully emersed myself, became a master practitioner of NLP and hypnosis thinking I was just gonna use this to sort myself out. ‘Cause as you go through the course, as you do the work on each other start thinking, great! Get lots of therapy plus I can learn this stuff. It’s always good fun learning and that’s what I used to start me on my journey of completely conquering all of those fears and ended up helping other people do the same as a result.

– And you’ve been speaking out on stages, you’ve been on large stages, you’ve been speaking all over the world. And now you also took stage hypnosis as well doing stage hypnosis show. So talking about transformation and overcoming fears, you definitely did the living and breathing example of your message. So now let’s go, there’s actually I’ve got another question for you. And there’s something, it’s a good personal question. Is there something that influenced, that happened to you or something that you’ve read or a personal philosophy that influenced the way you live your life and/or you run your business? ‘Cause I found that we all have different things that we’re doing in life or different passions that we have in life and they also influence the way we run our life. I often give the example of basketball. It’s a team sport and influenced massive and I’ve always loved team sports. And it influenced massively the way I run business which is all about building a team and also Gtex which is about doing things together and growing together and I didn’t realise until recently that that was actually where it came from and one of the things that influenced me. Do you have something similar in your own life that influenced you to live or run your business in a certain way?

– That’s a really good question that I’ve never come across before. That is an interesting one. So it means I’ve got no prepared answers so all I can do is go with intuition, the gut feel, the hands that comes off which as we all know so often tends to be the right one

– The right one

– Yeah! And I think it’s a blend of a couple of things that made you wanna think is the career I had in IT, 20 years in IT, I’ve always been into computers. Even as a teen. I got the ZX81 once for Christmas which will mean nothing to most people but that was way back in 1981. It was a kit computer from Sinclair, the first true kit home computer you build up. Oh was that great fun. So 20-year career in IT where everything I did was all logical, methodical, analytical. You see a problem you don’t just dive in with the first thing that comes to mind and attempt to fix it, you see the problem, you analyse it, you understand it, you make sure you understand what’s going on. Which may not necessarily be what shows on the surface. They’re may be something deeper underneath that’s going on. Figuring it all out, making sure you get all the information. Coming up with a plan to resolve it. Working through the plan. Always checking as you go through to make sure is this doing what I thought it would do? If it is, carry on. If not, stop, reassess the situation, adjust your course accordingly. And the more I look at it, the more I think that really applies, obviously applied with everything with IT. I think it applies with how I do my business. And it also applies with the approach I have when working with clients. It’s not what I don’t do as a client comes in, says I’ve got this problem, alright hey let’s do this, bam, done. Oh wait, that didn’t do anything. ‘Cause so often when someone comes with a problem it’s not the problem, it’s something underneath which is the real problem. But this sort of thing is kind of the symptoms that it’s masking what is the more painful, deeper problem. And unless you analyse the whole situation, look at it from all angles. Figure out exactly what’s going on, understand what’s going on. You haven’t got much of a chance of addressing the situation.

– That’s when the inner geeks come out. So I’m gonna analyse the situation okay, find the root cause. Thank you for the answer, it’s fascinating to see how our influence or past careers or hobbies or interests actually they are influencing the way we see the world. And the way we act and behave and the choices that we make. That’s what I love about this industry of coaches, speakers, consultants, that everyone approached their different problems or they’re methodologies using a different angle which is often comes from these past backgrounds or experiences that we have. So thank you for sharing, Keith. So we have, as entrepreneurs are we’re going to focus mainly on fear of public speaking in a moment but this is not the only fear that we have. A lot of times we can have other fears that are stopping us that we’re not even aware of. So in your work with entrepreneurs, what have you identified to be the main fears and how do they manifest?

– Cool so, I think we can probably break it down into maybe three or four main fears that most, if not all entrepreneurs experience at some point, at some level. Now the thing with each fear is for some, it’s really really strong and almost stops them. In fact, for many entrepreneurs it does stop them. For others, the fear can be there and they find a way to overcome it so they kind of don’t realise they have the fear because they found a way to overcome it. But when they take a step back and look, their fears were there and I think a major one is imposter syndrome which is fear of Am I really good enough? What if I get caught out? What if I’m not as good as I think? What if people spot that I’m bluffing? When you’re not bluffing, you know your stuff. You’ve got a proven track record but it’s just so easy for those self-doubts to build up and build up to then Who am I to dare to step up? Who am I to say, I am, whatever it is that you do. That is a massive fear which holds so many back. Stops them from stepping forward ’cause oh if I step forwards, I’ll be exposed as a fraud. When really what happens is you step forward, you’re now better and better able to help the people who really need your help. So we got that one. We got fears around things like picking up the phone, this is a major one for a lot of people. Picking up that phone and making those calls, whether it’s making calls or whether it’s making calls to people you already know. But you need to pick that call up. Perhaps discuss a problem they have or even just move them along in the sales process. So many people have such a problem, a fear of picking up the phone or the fears of rejection or what if it goes wrong, what will I say? That they end up not picking up the call, not making the phone, the call, week to week to week, and then wondering why nobody’s calling them and the business is dissolved . And I think another big one which kinda relates in a way to these is a fear of rejection. What are other people gonna think of me? What if they don’t like me? Well so what if they don’t like you? What about the ones who do like you? They’re the ones to focus on. So I think that there’s apart from the one we’re gonna talk about in a moment around stage fright, I think those are the other three main things which really hold entrepreneurs back.

– Brilliant. So now let’s focus on stage fright. Where does stage fright comes from? Let’s start from there.

– Good place to start. So the thing with stage fright, there can be various different factors which can affect it. And this again goes back to that whole approach of analyse the whole situation rather than dive in. As a general, general thing people don’t like feeling vulnerable. People don’t like feeling that they’re being judged. People kinda feel that, well I’m putting myself out there as the expert in this topic. What if somebody else knows a bit more than me? Hey, I’ve got news for you. There is always gonna be somebody who knows more than you about a particular thing and you know about the vast majority of the audience about the thing you’re talking about and that’s the reason that they’re there. But we have this oh what if somebody asks me a question I don’t know the answer to? Which is a great learning opportunity. What if I stumble on my words? What if I forget what I’m gonna say? What if my trousers fall off in front of everyone? We got all of these things that just kinda really play on our mind and cause us to hide from being on the stage and it’s all those fears. Fears about being found out, which is not true ’cause the reason you’re there is because you own your stuff. Fear, more practical fears, what if I forget what I’m gonna say? Which can happen to anyone and everyone. I’ve got a ways to overcome that. What if people ask me awkward questions? What if they laugh at me? What if they do? What if they don’t? What if they like what you have to say? What if you say one thing which changes the whole life of somebody in the audience? ‘Cause that has happened, I’m sure. I’m sure all of us can think back to one example where somebody has stood up on stage and said something and that sparked things in us which has taken us a whole new direction.

– Yeah it is fascinating. I remember when I had my first few speaking engagements and luckily as a person, I’m just kind of a person that doesn’t really care too much about what people think. I don’t really care too much about putting myself out there in uncomfortable situations. That’s where I thrive the most, in a uncomfortable situation. I kind of get bored and lose interest if it’s too easy. That’s my kind of personality. I found that when I did my first speaking engagement, I was terrified. I think I was 18. Or 17 or 18. So I, that’s an interesting story, I was in love with my girlfriend at the time and she was super smart at school. And at the time I was like one of the worst in the school. And she got through the finals in the Youth European Parliament Commission. So we were then creating, they were meeting with all the most clever students and bright students from all over Europe to deliberate on some laws that could be passed to the European parliament. So it was a huge deal for our school and only three people from the school were selected. I don’t remember how I managed to get in, to sneak in there and be part of the team. Even if I didn’t do any qualifications or qualifies I just talked myself into there so I could spend time with my girlfriend that I was there. And I remember when they asked who wants, we created our plan, they asked, who wants to speak? Who wants to talk about it? We look around and I was, everyone was mutually academically successful, I was one of the worst in the school and no one put their hands up. And just because I think I wanted to prove something to myself, I put my hand up and I said, I’m gonna do it. And I was like what the fuck am I doing? And when the moment came I was so nervous, my hands were sweating. I literally like, my hands were sweating so much that the sweat passed through the freaking paper. That was horrid. I know it’s a gross image. And so I couldn’t speak and my mind went blank and somehow I finished and I ran off the stage. And it was my very first experience and I was like, why is this so dreadful? Why is this so dreadful? Because in normal social situations I could talk to people. I didn’t have that problem. So what do you think, I know for people that now are approaching public speaking and maybe they had their first few opportunities to speak and whether they were confident in social situations or not confident in social situations. Still, this kind of body reaction happened and these feelings happened. So what can we do to overcome that? What are some of the first steps that we can take?

– A very important thing to appreciate and it’s not always to appreciate this in the moment but it’s something we can kind of appreciate beforehand is that as with all skills, as with everything we do, it gets easier over time. So yeah, the first few times may well be scary but you know what, the first time you walked, the first few steps you took was scary. So scary, your parents had to really encourage you to make those steps. The first time we do anything, it is very scary because we’ve got fear of the unknown. The more we do these things, the easier it’s gonna get. So don’t let the fact that the first time are all the same, no, the third time we do it is really scary. Don’t let that put you off. Know that hey, this is cool. The fact that I’m scared means I’m alive, it means I’m feeling emotions. This is good . It means I’m a real human. It also means I care about what I’m doing ’cause if you didn’t care about it, if you didn’t care about getting the information across to the audience, if you didn’t care about engaging with them or making sure they got what they came for, you ain’t gonna be nervous at all ’cause you’re not gonna give a dang about any of it. So if anything, the fact that you have these nerves is a good sign. It shows that this is something you’re passionate about. It shows you care about doing a good job. Many things you kinda, one very important thing, what a lot of people do is they just right, it’s time for me to get, it’s time for me to speak, get up, go on, bam, straight into it, with no preparation, no warm up or anything. And I mean, if you’re gonna run a race, or if you’re gonna play a football match or a basketball match or anything, you do some physical warm up first, yeah? You don’t just jump straight out of bed, into your basketball clothes and on to the court and then wonder why you end up pulling your muscle. Yeah, you gotta spend a little time to warm up. So if you’re gonna be doing a if you’re gonna be speaking on stage, the most of what you’re doing is mental so you need a bit of mental warm up. And that can be as simple as just finding a quiet space for the five minutes beforehand and just, don’t focus on what you’re going to be doing, don’t go over in your mind what you’re going to be talking about ’cause by that point it’s too late. Either it’s there or it’s not there. Going over it and cramming it in those five minutes, the only thing it can do is make it worse. And it does the exact opposite of a warm-up. It’s like a cool-down if anything. So kind of just, take some deep breaths, sort of focus, take some slow, deep breaths. Focus on just feeling calm and relaxed because some of when we go on stage we’re really nervous, our heart’s already pounding away, the sweat’s pouring. So we go on stage in that state and then the emotion heightens so if your emotion is heightening from an already heightened, terrified place. There’s only one way it’s gonna go and that’s worse. If you can bring yourself into a calmer place, so that when you go onto stage and the adrenaline kicks in and it brings you up, you’re not going from terrified to super-terrified you’re going from calm to a bit alert, maybe a little bit on edge but you know what, we got this. We can do it. That freaks all our excitement. So that’s a very important thing and I’ve seen so many people who that are excellent at all the other steps, they miss that bit out and then wonder why their head kinda goes. It’s because you’re going in from an already heightened state making it worse so that’s it. Good, calm, relaxing deep breaths just before going and even if it just means in the corridor or in the bathroom just before going on just take a few minutes there Not even thinking about what you’re going to be doing but just calming and centering yourself.

– That’s about calming and centering. Absolutely, it’s really really really important. Got lots of situations where I went in and did exactly what you said in the beginning. I am, I was stressed and so I thought oh well, this is a new talk, I’m not gonna remember it so I’m gonna review the slides in my last five minutes and the more I was reviewing the more I was realising I didn’t know them and then I was even more stressed and yeah, I practically sucked in this kind of situation. So absolutely, taking the time is really important. What else we can do? What else can we do to become better to overcome this fear?

– Another great step is in the preparation stage, preparation stage. Now what a lot of people do is that they write, I’ll write out my whole talk. I will then try to memorise the talk. And then deliver my memorised speech. Which is an absolutely awful thing to do in practically every way. Delivering a memorised talk isn’t delivering a speech, that’s acting. That’s what actors do and actors spend years, decades, perfecting, developing and perfecting the ability to deliver a memorised talk. And even then, very often they will not deliver it exactly as they prepared it. That’s why there’s usually a prompter or you have other people who are on stage and if you do have that blank, which happens, they can kind of fill in and help you through it or you can improvise and get through it. Doesn’t work with Shakespeare, I have to say. People don’t like it when you improv in Shakespeare. But that’s, they spend hours and countless tens or hundreds of hours rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing to deliver it. And you also have to develop the skills to be able to deliver it in such a way that people don’t think oh, there he is reciting a memorised talk. ‘Cause it’s one thing reciting it, it’s another thing actually delivering it. Don’t do that. It comes across really really badly and makes you have so much practise that you’re amazing at it. Also you run the massive risk of forgetting where you are. And when you memorise it as a linear, you basically memorise it as a linear thread of a talk. If you forget one point, you got no way to jump back in to the next. You’ve lost your queue for the next bit and the next part and that’s where the mind goes blank. I forgot my lines, I don’t know what comes next. Ahhh! So don’t attempt to memorise the entire talk. You’re gonna deliver it awful, you’ll probably forget plus your timing’s gonna be out anyway. Because no matter how well you practise timing it, when you get up there and the adrenaline kicks in, you end up maybe talking a bit faster or you get people asking questions which slows it up and throws your timing out. Why do people try and write speeches and deliver ’em like that? Because they want to make sure they remember everything that they’re gonna talk about. But see here’s the thing, when you’re up there the reason you’re up there is because you know what you’re talking about. You’re the expert on that topic. Could you deliver everything you know about that topic in the time there? No you couldn’t, no you couldn’t. It would take your lifetime to deliver everything you know. So you’re always gonna be missing some stuff out. People aren’t gonna be expecting everything. But then what they’re gonna expect is that whatever you deliver makes sense so then they can follow it and they can action it. So rather than script your entire talk, break it down into one of the key points I’m going to talk about. The key points I’m going to mention, so you might have say five key points. I got my intro, I got point one, point two, point three, I got my summary conclusion. That’s five things to remember which is much, much easier, now delve in to the psychology and the brain make-up of it. We tend to be able to remember seven plus or minus two things at any one time. So five definitely falls in that, so that’s something easy we can remember. We now have a structure, we know we can talk about those points because we’ve got so much stuff that we know. So we know right, I’m gonna start with my intro, I know kinda what I need to do about that. I know my three points, I can talk about those. And I can wrap it all up. We now have far less to remember, there’s far less stress. It means if people, suppose people start asking lots of questions around point one. They, wow, this is something they’re really interested in. We can focus a bit more on this. And then we can just give a higher-level overview of points two and three and say, if you wanna know more, get in touch and we can discuss it. It gives you that flexibility to expand it, to contract it.

– Absolutely. Now I know that I want to wrap up with one point um, because now there are some people that where the fear of public speaking is really, is less of a technical knowledge but now we’re talking more about deep-rooted emotions. And so when we are going into that realm, that’s where you are a super expert in, is the normal warm-up technique and know your points, they work up to a point. They’re important but then if the emotions they are triggered, they are so strong, you know, both being trained by the same speaker trainer when the emotion are high, intelligence is low. And so what are some of the techniques that you found that are more useful to get rid of this deep-rooted can be traumas, can be emotions, can be things that happened in the past that are affecting it. What kind of techniques do you use when you work with these kind of people and in these kind of environments?

– Sure. So there are two components to this. There’s the work you can do outside of the speaking environment. And there’s the stuff you can do when you’re actually there on stage at the time. Work you do outside of it, there’s lots of work you can do to address the emotions, find the underlying causes, change the emotion that’s associated with those events, lots of different modalities who’d like notice to do that, NLP will do that, that’s the ones I specialise in. Other people use EFT for example, MDR, or whatever your preferred modality is of dealing with these things.

– Is there something that you’ve found to be more effective than others or is that, techniques change from person to person?

– That is a really good question. And the more I’ve looked it, the more I’ve realised there’s no one-size-fits-all cure. Different things will work for different people. Partly because the different techniques work in different ways. And partly because of the different mindsets that the person has. And really, all of these tools, they’re all just metaphors anyway. So there is no right and wrong it’s what resonates most with you as a person. That’s what’s gonna get you the better results.

– Thank you for clarifying.

– No my absolute pleasure, my absolute pleasure. The biggest things that tend to hold us back or cause us fear when we’re on stage is the people who are gonna judge me. What if people don’t like me? Those tend to be the biggest ones. The reality is around the liking bit, the reality is when you go on stage, if you’re going to be speaking to more than say 20 people, there is a very high probability there will be one person in the audience who does not like you. And it’s nothing personal. How could it be not personal? They don’t like me! It’s not personal, they’ve probably never met you before. They just, they don’t even know why, they’re just taking a dislike to you. And that’s absolutely fine ’cause we do the same. I can guarantee you’ve been in groups of people and you see someone you just get that instant dislike to that person. You have no idea why, you can’t rationalise it, it’s just there’s something you dislike about that person. And that’s absolutely fine ’cause see here’s the thing, throughout the entire history of humanity, nobody has been universally loved. Nobody has, not even you Simone, I’m sorry to

– Uh, Nooo! But, I mean, when you look at the major religious figures even Christ, Buddha, Prophet Mohammed, they all had their detractors, they all had people who disliked them and that’s putting it mildly in some cases.

– Exactly.

– It didn’t stop them getting out there, presenting their message. You see when there’s somebody who dislikes you, you can either spend all your energy focusing all your time on that person go, oh please like me, please oh please like me which, A, is gonna make them like you even less ’cause now you’re giving them reason to justify them not liking you ’cause you just a whiny crybaby. That’s how you come across. And B, you alienate everybody else ’cause you’re focusing on that one person and alienating everyone else who either likes you or is open to you. Acknowledge that not everyone is gonna like you and acknowledge that the majority of the room who are there that here to hear what you have to say, they either like you or they’re open, they haven’t made their mind up either way. Connect, focus your energy on them. Sometimes when I’m doing a talk, particularly when I’m doing a talk around these things I even highlight that point. I’ll say look, hey, statistically speaking there are three people in this audience who just do not like me and that’s absolutely cool. Sorry you gotta sit through this but hey, everyone else enjoys it, I’m sure that you can put up with me for a show. Yeah kinda acknowledge it, make a joke of it. It’s now in the open. There’s no energetic hold there. But just, I know it’s easy to say, it may be harder to do. But the more you do this, the more you practise it, the easier it becomes. So yeah, there probably will be people who dislike you. But that’s the same in all walks of life. The important thing is there are people who like you and they are the important ones, they’re the ones you are there to serve.

– Absolutely, yeah, thank you.

– Just having that in your mindset means it’s no longer about you, it’s about those other people who are looking to you for help.

– Yeah, yeah, so to sum up guys, make sure that you do keep doing the work outside if you are really struggling with public speaking ’cause public speaking is I think the best skill, the most important skill that you can learn as a business owner, as an expert because as an expert, you gotta talk about your subject matter. That’s why you’re an expert, because you talk about it. Otherwise if no one knows that you know, then you’re not an expert at it, you can be just an expert in your head but other people will not say that you are one and that alone, becoming an influencer or an authority in your field so make sure that if you are resisting public speaking and you know that is something you want to do, then really seek for some help. You know that you got to do something off stage, do your work on stage, because the more the good news is that yes, the beginning it will suck, it will be dreadful, might be, but then the more you do it, the better it becomes. And suddenly you will find our way when you step on the stage and what you’re feeling is excitement instead of fear. So that you’re looking forward to speaking. So Keith, if someone wants to get help in fears in general but in particular in public speaking as well, what can they reach out to you?

– You’ll find me all over social media, always look for the name Keith Blakemore-Noble. Or go to my website keithblakemorenoble.com. You’ll find resources there, you’ll find ways to get in touch. You’ll find information about the different ways in which I help people coaching including overcoming stage fight.

– Fantastic so the links are going to be in the show notes. Make sure you connect with Keith at keithblakemorenoble.com or on his social media, Keith Blakemore-Noble. Keith, it was an absolute pleasure to have this interview together, it was well overdue. It’s been great catching up. Thank you very much for joining us today.

– Thank you so much, Simone.

– And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching or listening. If you haven’t subscribed yet to the show, make sure you subscribe, but right now. So then you don’t miss any other incredible episodes. We have always great guests talking about how you can become a better person in the expert field if you are an entrepreneur or business owner. Or how as well you can grow your business with different strategies. So I’m looking forward seeing you next time and remember that together we grow exponentially. Ciao!