Episode #121 The Alchemy Of Confidence With Keith Blakemore-Noble

Transcript

– Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Explode Your Expert Biz Show. I’m here today with the one and only, on of our GTeX members, Keith Blakemore Noble. How are you doing?

– I am doing fantastically, thank you, Simone. How about you?

– I am doing incredibly well. Now, you got to know before we started, Keith is the person that hypnotised me, and I forgot, that’s how we started with that, right? You got me to forgot one number, if I remember well.

– That’s right–

– Or a letter.

– I got you to forget the number three.

– Yeah, you got be to forgot the number three, oh my God.

– And then, even better, we got you to forget what your name was.

– And then my name, I still don’t even remember right now, man, it was so powerful. And also I remember that you got my feet stuck on the floor, and you were waving like a 50-pound note in front of me, and I couldn’t grab it.

– You couldn’t reach it, that’s right.

– That’s crazy, man. So today we are talking about how to turn your deepest fears into your biggest strength. And I know you, I know you personally, I know your journey, I know your story. And that’s why I really wanted you to be one of the guests on our show because I think that more people need the work that you are doing here in the world and need to experience it. So before we get started talking about confidence, about turning fears into strengths, how about you give us an overview of your journey. What got you here?

– Ooh, that’s a good one. I’ll give you the condensed version, ’cause the full version would take 52 years and counting. So I’ll give you the condensed version. So yeah, I was born at a very young age, and I grew up kind of in the middle of nowhere with just me, my mom, and my dad and radio for listening with mother for company. That was pretty much it, and I got really good at learning how to re-tune the radio when you got bored with it, but turns out you can’t do the same with people. They tend to take offence if you try to re-tune them when they get a bit boring. As I was growing up kind of in the middle of nowhere, my sister came along about three years later on, and then when I reached five, we moved to a village, and I started going to school.

– And where was that? Which part of the world?

– That’s up in the northeast of Scotland.

– Yes, beautiful place.

– It is lovely, and actually I’m really glad to say, having travelled the world, I’m now back living 15 miles away from where I grew up. It’s nice to be back home. But yeah, I started school, but the trouble was, for my first five years, I’d kind of not learned how to kind of interact with other people, I’d not learned how to make friends. And it got kind of lonely, ’cause it was really hard to know how to make friends with people. So you’re coming into this place where pretty much all the kids know each other, ’cause they’d been growing up playing together. And it was really, really difficult to make friends. And I just couldn’t crack, I made a few friends, but not very many, and that was the story that kind of went through the whole of school life. I did well academically, and from there, I went to university, graduated university, again finding it a pretty lonely place a lot of the time. Went into work, developed a career in IT, and again, I did really well in that. I rose really high up in my profession in IT. I became a Fellow of the British Computer Society which is their chartered professional society for computer-y people, and fellowship is, it’s kind of the highest level that us mere mortals can reach. In order to, the level higher than that is basically Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. I did apply for those positions, but I was told they were taken by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but I still applied for them.

– Aw, dammit!

– I know, right? So I stayed with Fellowship. So I was doing well academically, and I was doing well with my career. I was in charge of departments, I had people working for me in the UK, in Norway, in New Zealand. I was looking after servers around the world in UK, U.S.A., Europe, Far East, and so on. But socially, things were, as you can imagine, still pretty sucky ’cause how do you make friends when you can’t even bring yourself to speak with people, speak with strangers? And it then started getting even worse, ’cause once your career reaches a certain level, it’s not what you know, it’s kinda who you know that your career progression is then through the contacts that you make. And IT is a very, very constant, a very fast evolving thing, constantly evolving. So you gotta keep going to seminars and trainings and so on, just to keep abreast of the latest techniques. And I would see the agendas for these seminars, and it would all look really interesting, and then I’d see the very first line, registration and coffee. It’s like, oh, man, I’ve gotta, you mean I’ve gotta make small talk with people, with strangers, I can’t do this. And I would find myself coming up with excuses to not attend these seminars which meant I was kind of falling behind on the latest things, not keeping abreast of it, not making the contacts and so on. And eventually the whole came to a head when I was a member of an online group. This was kind of just before the likes of Facebook and so on took off. I was in an online group and got to know people quite well from talking through their computer. And somebody said, “Hey, why don’t we all “get together in London for a Christmas party?” ‘Cause is was nearly Christmas and we thought, yeah, sounds like a good idea. And I was thinking, well, normally I wouldn’t do it, but I know enough of these people, I’ve been chatting with them online, yeah, go on, how hard can it be? Famous last words. I found out exactly how hard it could be because when I got there, I realised there’s a massive difference between talking wit people on the computer and actually being face to face with someone. Here is was, entering a roomful of strangers, and I started to panic and I locked myself in the toilet, had a full-on, half-hour panic attack, which is a horrible thing to have. If anyone’s experienced it, they’re horrible. And once I finished the panic attack, I then basically fled all the way from the Strand down to Waterloo, which is a good probably mile, couple of miles, something like that. And I ran the whole way. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t do physical exertion, I don’t run. There’s never a reason to run. There’s always another bus in a few minutes, so whatever. But such was my terror, I ran the whole way, didn’t even stop at the cloakroom to get my coat ’cause that would have meant speaking to someone. I miss that coat, that was a nice coat. But I didn’t start to calm down until the train was pulling out of the station. I was just like, this is ridiculous. And I remember saying to myself, you know, you can’t go on like this, you’ve gotta change. What’s your life gonna be like in five, 10 years’ time if you just carry on the same way, if you don’t make any changes? You’ve gotta change, you’ve gotta do something. And so me being me, I started learning the tools of hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming and those sorts of tools, started learning those to conquer my own stuff around confidence and to develop my own confidence. And that’s kinda where I am now. I’ve transformed my own stuff around that. I now love connecting with strangers. Heck, that’s kinda how we connected, isn’t it, Simone?

– Yeah.

– In the past, there’s no way we would have been able to have this chat, let alone do all this stuff that we’ve done before. And I kind of enjoyed it so much that I started helping other people out, ’cause I’ve had people say, “Hey, can you help me with this, that, and the other.” And the biggest coincidence of all, around about that same time, where I was working in IT for restructuring and costs and all this sort of thing, my role was made redundant, I was one of the people who was made redundant, so I was basically given a big wheelbarrow full of cash and told never to come back. And I thought, huh, if ever I was looking for a sign that it’s time to change–

– It was that!

– This is it! And here I am now, helping people transform their deepest fears into their greatest strengths.

– And in all that, you’ve been like in your journey with NLP, you became also one of the main trainers for Christopher Howard. You were running seminars for like recent thousands of people.

– Yep.

– In Bali, all over the world. So it’s been a huge change from where you were to where you are right now, and because now we are talking about how to grow an expert business, confidence is crucial, ’cause if you think about it, it is what allows you to say, “I am the expert, look at me.” Like, you gotta buy from me and not from Johnny down the road. So let’s talk about confidence. Let’s start talking about confidence. You had a massive transformation in terms of your personal confidence. Where is the starting point for someone that says, “I’m an expert, I wanna get out there, “but I’m not sure if people are going to like me, “I’m not sure if people are going to like “what I have to say, I’m not sure if people “are going to like my product or service.” Where should these people start?

– That is a very, very common starting point for so many people, so many of us have this stuff. But it’s, ah, who am I to say these things, will people like me, and all that sort of thing. The need to be liked is a massive, massive need in all of us, basically. In every single one of us, we have this need to be liked. And when we find people who don’t like us, that kind of hits really hard. Not that you know that, ’cause there’s nobody who doesn’t like you, Simone, obviously.

– Obviously, obviously. I’ll tell you when we finish the interview a message that someone sent me yesterday. But anyway, let’s move on.

– I’m looking forward to that. But the reality of life is, absolutely nobody is universally liked. I mean, believe it or not, there are actually people out there who don’t like me. Can you believe that? There are people out there who don’t like me!

– No way!

– I know, right? Crazy! But nobody in the entire history of humanity has been universally liked. I mean, if you look at Buddha or Christ, the prophet Mohammed, they all had their detractors. And you know, I kinda figure, if it was good enough for them, eh, it’s good enough for me. It’s good enough for all of us, and it’s okay, because even though we’re not universally liked, also, the reverse is true. We don’t like everybody. There are people that we don’t like. And that’s just the way that life is. But when we’re dealing with people, we can either focus all our energy and attention on the people who don’t like us and kind of try to appeal to them and try and make them like us. But the trouble is, that just comes over as us going, oh, please like me, please, why don’t you like me? Please like me! Which just alienates you even more, right? ‘Cause now, they’re going, “Well, I was right “to dislike this person.”

– Yeah, exactly.

– “He’s quite the son of a,” yeah. So and all the time we’re doing that, further alienating the people who’ve decided they don’t like us, we’re not paying any attention to the people who do like us, so they’re starting to feel left out. And then there’s the majority of people who neither like us nor dislike us ’cause they haven’t had a chance to form an opinion yet, and they just see this whiny cry-baby who’s desperately going, please like me, please like me. And they go, “Yeah, you know what, pfft.” Whereas if we acknowledge, yeah, you know what? There are people who don’t like us, people out there who don’t like me, that’s absolutely fine, no worries. I’m gonna hang out here with the people who do like me, ’cause the people who do like me, they’re gonna be paying attention to what I say, they’re the people I can help, and by being me and serving those people, I can help them. And what’s gonna happen? They are then gonna turn into my raving fans, and they’re gonna be telling other people about the wonderful experience they had working with me, and those other people are then gonna go, “Huh, okay, I’ll give them a listen.” And that’s how word spreads. So I know it’s a very difficult thing to kind of get over initially, the fact that there are people who just do not like you. Often they don’t know why they don’t like you, and pfft, that’s absolutely fine. Acknowledge that they don’t like you, and hey, that’s up to them, that’s perfectly fine, I accept they don’t like me, no problem, and focus on the people who do like you, focus on how you can help the people who do like you. And even if it’s only a few people you find who like you, there’s gonna be even fewer people who dislike you, and a lot of people who have no opinion one way or the other. Their opinion is gonna be informed by the people who speak loudest about you, and the ones who speak loudest about you are the ones where you direct your energy.

– Yep.

– If you direct your energy and your attention to serving the people who do like you and who you can help, then it becomes a snowball effect.

– Absolutely, and you mention in your work that there are three types of confidence. What are these three types of confidence?

– Cool, okay, well, the thing with confidence is, people think confidence is kind of like just a switch or a volume control, like I either have no confidence, lots of confidence, or somewhere in the middle. Confidence, it’s more like a graphic equaliser, you know those big hi-fis where you got hundreds of different bands, and you can. We can have confidence in some things, no confidence in other things, and varying levels of confidence in-between. So I mean, if somebody says to me, “Keith, I have absolutely no confidence. “I completely lack confidence.” Are you sure? “Yep, no confidence at all.” Huh, are you confident in that? “Wait a minute.” Okay, so you couldn’t stand up in front of 800 people and then speak with them. “Yeah, no, whew, couldn’t do that.” Okay, could you tie your shoelaces? “Well, yeah, of course I could.” You could confidently tie your shoelaces with your eyes closed? “Yeah.” We have confidence in lots of different areas. So that’s the first thing to remember about confidence. The second thing is even when we take a particular thing, be it, let’s take driving as an example.

– Yep.

– We’ve got three different components of confidence within that. We’ve got the skill confidence, we got self-confidence, and we’ve got emotional confidence. And I’ll just very quickly go into the three and give you–

– Yeah.

– Of what I mean there. So skill confidence is actually having the skill to be able to do it. So when you’re driving, for example, skill confidence is having the ability to control the steering wheel, to use the pedals, to change gears, to know where you’re going, the actual skill to do all of these things. So that’s kind of skill confidence. If you don’t have skill confidence, if you don’t know how to do those things, then you’re not gonna be able to do it.

– Yep.

– self-confidence is your belief in yourself and your abilities. So within the driving, skill confidence would be your belief that you have the skill to do these things. So then, even if you know how to do it but you don’t have the belief that you can do it, you don’t have that self-confidence, you’re not gonna be any good.

– Yep.

– And then we’ve got the third one, the most powerful one, and this is often what people think of when they’re thinking of confidence. It’s kind of a mixture of the self-confidence and the emotional confidence, the emotional confidence is your belief in overall the levels of your ability and also knowing about not only about what you can do but where your limits are in what you can’t do. Because so often we hear of young drivers, and I’m not seeking to stereotype, but it is true, and this is why insurance rates are much higher for younger drivers or newer drivers, young drivers, they pass the test and say, “Yay, this is it, I can drive!” And they start thrashing the car ’cause they don’t know. I see you nodding away, you’ve probably experienced it. I know I’ve experienced this myself.

– Done it, done it, it’s like, yay, I got my driving licence, sunglasses, blast up the music, arm outside the window. Of course, in Italy we have good weather, so we can do this kind of things.

– Well, hell, yeah.

– And I was like the king of the road up until one point. I remember, I even had the smart idea to change a tune in my iPod because I had the iPod which was connected to a wire to a cassette–

– Oh, yeah.

– A recorded cassette tape, and I said, okay, let me switch it off, so I looked down for a moment and switched song, by the time I looked up, the car in front of me stopped.

– Ooh.

– So then, it was too late, bam!

– Exactly.

– New car, just bought.

– Yeah, oh, man.

– Then I had to go back and see my mom. So I was more worried about my mom than about the car.

– Yeah, I can imagine!

– At that point, but yeah, definitely I understand what you’re talking about when you were talking about that kind of confidence, yeah.

– Exactly, so you can have all three in balance. And that’s one of the things when I’m working with people with confidence ’cause so many people work on the self-confidence or emotional confidence side of things, but they forget that skill confidence is a very important thing. I mean, for example, suppose, Simone, you came to me and said, “You know what, Keith, “I wanna believe that I am the world’s best brain surgeon.” We could work on that, we could give you the confidence to truly believe you are a fantastic brain surgeon. You then walk into the operating theatre, “Hey, oh, well, I have no idea what to, “I’m the best brain surgeon, I know I’m really good, “but I haven’t got a clue what to do now.” ‘Cause you haven’t got the skills! And that’s what kind of struck me when I first conquered my lack of confidence around speaking with strangers and so on or even going up strangers and speaking to them. I conquered all of that stuff, so I was now like, yeah, I can go up to speak with strangers, yep, I can do that. I’d go up and speak with strangers, hello, oh I don’t know what to say next ’cause I’ve never got this far before. And all of a sudden, there’s a whole new pit opens up. So you’ve gotta have all three aspects of confidence.

– Which one should you start from? So let’s put in terms of, in the perspective of business. So I’m out there, I’m starting out, and I need to have a, but even if I’m not starting out, I can be already make six, seven figures, but there is always another level, so now I’m not comfortable in the new area I’m stepping into. Which one should I start from? Is is the emotional confidence, the skill confidence, the self-confidence?

– Great question. Kind of all three of them. When you do it sort of the right way, as it were, I would say start with the skill confidence because you develop the skills, but allow yourself to then develop the self-confidence to know and appreciate that you’re developing those skills, and then the more that you use them and apply them, so the emotional confidence then comes into being. So it’s like, okay, I have the skill now, I recognise that I have the skill, and now I recognise that I know how to use the skill that I have, and that kind of ties it all together.

– Yep.

– With that said, often when I work with people, we don’t start straight at the skill part, because they’ve still got a whole lot of other emotional baggage which isn’t related directly to that confidence but is more about them and their mindset. So they have the fears, the belief that they can’t do this, they’re not good enough, and that’s a whole different ballgame. So you clear through all of those emotions, change all their limiting decisions, we call them limiting decisions, where you’ve decided at some point in the past, “people like me don’t succeed,” or “rich people are not worth knowing,” in which case, how are you gonna attract money if you believe that being rich means you’re not gonna be a nice person. You’ve decided all these things when you were really young, so you’ve got all of that stuff which is holding you back. So we clear through all of that, then that brings you up to developing the skill confidence. Hand in hand with that goes the self-confidence which then brings the emotional confidence as you practise it and start using it. So to answer your question, I would say you would start with the skill confidence, having made sure you’ve kind of got the foundations first.

– Yep.

– You’ve gotten rid of the other baggage before you get onto the confidence thing.

– It makes sense, it makes me think about what seems like is a very trending topic at the moment, this imposter syndrome.

– Yeah.

– Where people are saying, oh, why me? Instead of like, why should people work with me? Now, I don’t know if I’ve ever had this imposter syndrome. That’s why probably I don’t understand or I can’t fully relate to it, but it feels like saying, well, if you don’t think you’re qualified enough or you don’t have the right skills, most of the time, just knowing that you have the right skills helps you massively.

– Absolutely, yes.

– So if someone says, oh, well, why me? Well, probably you do a bit more of the groundwork.

– Yeah.

– But then, if you are looking at, okay, I’ve actually done this work for 10 years, and I’m still saying, oh, why me, then you need to work on a deeper emotional level, and as you were saying, laying those foundations–

– Yes.

– That allows you to be okay. I think it’s more about being okay with who you are.

– Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

– That’s what it feels like.

– I would say, in a lot of cases, imposter syndrome is a very strong sign of a lack of self-confidence, ’cause you’ve got the skills, but you don’t have the self-belief in your–

– Right.

– Havin of those skills, and that then eats away at the emotional confidence. So imposter syndrome hits straight into self-confidence. When you build up the self-confidence, the imposter syndrome just doesn’t have a chance to attack. And how do you build up the self-confidence? By looking at your track record of using your skills. At which–

– Yep, it makes it–

– And that usually just comes around from practise, practise, practise, using them, using them, and consciously making a note of every time you have successfully used those skills. Hey, look at these people I’ve helped, looked at how I’ve helped me. We so often seek out testimonials, or we ought to seek out testimonials and case studies to convince and demonstrate to other people that we know what we’re doing and that we’re the expert. Very rarely do we look at those testimonials to remind ourselves that we are good at what we do and that we are the real deal. So those can work both ways. So it’s a good habit to kind of just go back and read through all those testimonials and read through the case studies. ‘Cause I know, sort of in the earlier days when I was doing the seminars and trainings and so on for Chris Howard, there would be times I’d think, oh, God, I was rubbish, who am I to teach this? And then I’d read through the feedback, ’cause we would get feedback on every course, everybody would be invited to give feedback for multiple reasons, but I’d read through, and we’d get time after time people saying good things, saying how it’s helped, and you start to think, ah, of course, yes, yes, there’s lots of stuff I don’t know about the topic, however, I am way ahead of the people that I have been teaching, and because of what I know, I’ve been able to bring them up a level. So a great way to kind of counteract the imposter syndrome, yes, polish up your skills, but also check those testimonials, check the case studies, have a read through them maybe once a month or something like that, just to remind yourself. Of you’re about to go and deliver a two-day training, for example, have a read through all the positive feedback that you got from the previous one. Have a look through the ways in which you have helped people transform their lives and realise that you have got the skills to do what you’re saying, you have got that right. And that will improve your self-confidence which feeds directly into the emotional confidence.

– Absolutely. It looks like everything affects the other part.

– Yes.

– So you got to work on every single aspect, and definitely reminding, as you said, reminding to yourself what are the things that you’re great at, what are the things, what are the results that you’ve been able to produce, the experiences that you have and constantly, constantly having that reinforcement then helps you with that strong belief–

– Yes.

– That you are ready to get out there, you are ready to charge big money, you are ready to get the right clients that you want to work, the clients that you really want to work with you. So now, before we part, two more questions, Keith. And now you’ve been a GTeX member for a while, how did GTeX help you grow your business in the past few years?

– It hasn’t. Next! I’m kidding, I’m kidding!

– Okay, the interview is finished! It’s been a pleasure visiting with you today.

– I think there’s been a couple of ways in which GTeX has, sorry, there’s been a couple of ways in which GTeX has helped me to grow my business. One is, I mean, there’s a great many learnings, particularly you’ve got a lot of online classes and tutorials and so on, and kinda working through those has really helped me to focus on particular key areas, particularly around niching. Because for a long time, I thought, I know my niche. I’m the Confidence Alchemist. My niche is helping people with confidence. Of course, confidence itself, as I’ve said, is a massive, huge area. In fact, looking back on it, the signs were there, ’cause I used to tell people that I help with your confidence, whether confidence personally, professionally, socially, romantically. It’s like, hang on, that’s not a niche. That’s four large chunks there already. And it kinda really helped me to focus that I need a niche within this niche. And that’s kinda why I now tend to focus more towards performers, actors, singers, and that sort of thing, ’cause that resonates the most with me, that’s something I like.

– That’s a big part of your background, as well.

– Exactly, a big part of my background.

– Being a magician, being a stage hypnotist as well, absolutely.

– Exactly. So it’s really helped me to see that what I thought was a niche wasn’t actually a niche at all. It was still a massive topic, and that explains why I wasn’t getting traction. So it’s kind of helped me to focus on the niche and then using the various trainings that are in the membership site has helped me to start preparing even things like the avatar, planning what I’m offering to people, working out the steps on how to engage the customer, take them through the journey, all those sorts of things. And I think the other thing that’s really helped me is in the online community, it’s a wonderful, warm place, totally nonjudgmental. It’s a place where people can share their dreams, their successes, but they can also share their fears, share their problems. And I love going in there where people are asking for feedback on something or looking for help with something or suggestions, I love going in there and offering whatever insight I can offer in the hopes it helps them. Because one, the more you help other people, the better it feels, two, the more you help others, the more others will help you, and three, and I think this is one which a lot of people tend to overlook, the more that I’m in there posting helping other people, the more I’m actually helping me indirectly because it’s kind of clarifying things in my mind. And there’ve been times when I’ve been giving somebody some advice or some feedback or some suggestions and I’ve thought, oh, I need to do the same! Huh, that explains the results! So that’s the way in which it’s been a massive help.

– Thank you, I appreciate it. And you also, in terms of support, there is no one in the community that is as supportive as you are. That’s why you won the GTeX award for the biggest contribution in the GTeX last year, in the GTeX family last year, so thank you very much. And if you are listening to this podcast and you want to become a GTeX member, you can test our membership only for one dollar. Ah!

– What? One dollar?

– How amazing is that? Yeah, one dollar for 30 days, you can test it out, look at all the online training, and you can test it out. But Keith, back to you right now. So you’ll find the link in the show notes, guys. Keith, back to you, if people now, people that have listened to you, listened to your message, and they said, “Oh my God, I actually could do “with a bit more confidence to get my business out there,” in particular, or “I’m a performer, “and I want to be able to perform at my best on stage,” where can they find you and what do you have for them?

– Best place to find me is at theconfidencealchemist.com. It’s the website, theconfidencealchemist.com. You’ll also find me on the usual social media platforms, et cetera. If you go to theconfidencealchemist.com, you’ll find out a lot more about me, what I offer, how I help people, people I’ve worked with. And also on there is, excuse me, a free guide I’ve got, The 5 Hidden Secrets of Confidence which goes, we’ve covered a little bit of some of those here, but also goes into a lot more detail on several other aspects, and that’s definitely worth a read.

– Fantastic, so we’ll make sure that we put if you scroll down in the show notes, there are all the links where you can connect with Keith. Make sure that you connect with him because if you are looking to grow your confidence to raise the bar, to raise your game, he’s the person you need to talk to. Keith, thank you very much for being an incredible guest today on this interview. It’s been a pleasure, and it was also a good overdue catch-up, it’s been a while. We get to have a good conversation as well, so thank you.

– It has been a while! You’ve been locking yourself away on the basketball court. You’re impossible to get a hold of these days.

– All right, buddy, thank you very much for this interview.

– Thank you.

– I really appreciate it. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to Explode Your Expert Business Show. If you haven’t subscribed yet, make sure that you subscribe right here, right now. And make sure that you leave us a review. Let us know what is it you loved the most about this interview, what was your biggest takeaway from this interview with Keith Blakemore Noble. Thank you for listening, and remember that together, we grow exponentially. See you next time, ciao!