March 12, 2025 • 47 mins
Ever feel like confidence is something other people just have while you’re stuck battling self-doubt? You’re not alone! In this episode of The Bold Blueprint, Claire Bartlett sits down with Ian Norton, the Confidence King, to break down the truth about confidence - what it is, how to build it, and why it’s the key to business and life success.
From overcoming imposter syndrome to setting boundaries and ditching people-pleasing, Ian shares his raw and powerful journey - including unexpected challenges like spending time in prison, rebuilding his life, and coaching some of the world’s most well-known figures.
If you’re ready to ditch self-doubt, stop playing small, and finally trust yourself, this episode is an absolute must-listen!
🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:✅ Why confidence isn’t something you’re born with - it’s something you build. ✅ How to break free from people-pleasing and set powerful boundaries. ✅ The mindset shift that separates successful entrepreneurs from those who stay stuck. ✅ How Ian went from rock bottom to coaching celebrities and CEOs. ✅ The reality of imposter syndrome - and how to overcome it. ✅ Why failure isn’t failure - it’s just a stepping stone to success. ✅ How to stop caring what people think and start living for YOU.
💡 Key Takeaways & Action Steps:💡 Confidence is learned - the more you take action, the stronger it gets. 💡 Saying "no" is a superpower - stop people-pleasing and reclaim your time. 💡 Failure doesn’t exist - only learning experiences. 💡 You don’t need permission to be yourself. 💡 Trust in yourself is the foundation of confidence.
🎧 Why You Need to Listen to This Episode:Confidence affects everything - from your business success to your relationships and the way you show up in the world. Ian’s no-BS, straight-talking approach will help you shift your mindset, take back control, and start building the confidence you need to go after your biggest goals.
If you’re tired of doubting yourself and waiting for the "right time" to step up this episode is the wake-up call you need!
🚀 Want More? Here’s Other Episodes In This Season:🔥 Dani Wallace – How to own your voice and step into the spotlight. 🔥 Holly Matthews – Resilience, mindset, and creating happiness from within. 🔥 Matthew Hughes – Using video to build your brand and confidence.
🔗 Resources & Links Mentioned:🌟 Connect with Ian Norton → Facebook | Website 🌟 Follow Claire Bartlett on Instagram → @Cs_Bartlett 🌟 Join The Bold Blueprint Community → Visit Website
📢 Help Spread the Word!If you found value in this episode, help us reach more people by: ✨ Following & Subscribing – Never miss a new episode! ✨ Leaving a Review – Your feedback helps us grow! ✨ Sharing this episode – Send it to a friend who needs a confidence boost! ✨ Tagging us on Instagram – Let us know your biggest takeaway!
Your support means everything, and it helps The Bold Blueprint continue bringing powerful, no-fluff conversations to entrepreneurs like you.
🎧 Hit play now and start building unshakable confidence today!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Bold Blueprint.
Today I am joined by Ian Norton, the Confidence King.
He is an elite confidence coach and I'm so thrilled to have him today because honestly,waiting till you hear his journey, it has been a ride and I cannot wait to share with you
how he got to where he is today and how he now supports people in building that confidenceto move their businesses forward.
(00:25):
So Ian, thank you so much for joining me today.
It's an absolute pleasure.
I am delighted.
It's great.
Good.
So to start us off, do you want to talk about the journey that you've been on, how yousort of ended up where you are today and if there was any specific pivotal moments that
led you here?
long have you got?
(00:47):
Yeah, it's a long and varied story.
Basically, Charm 2 was great.
I didn't come from a terrible, abusive family or anything.
My family were great.
They were very military.
My dad was ex-Navy, my brother was ex-army.
It was a very male-dominated business, kind family environment.
(01:09):
But it was loving, it was friendly.
I had everything I needed.
School was fine.
That was all okay.
But I was a real people pleaser.
And I, for reasons which will become evident as I go through my story, I never felt like Ifitted in.
And my parents were very much, they worked really, really hard and they ran fish and chipshops.
(01:33):
And to better everything, they then moved us from South London.
to the heart of Surrey in Cobham, which was very, very posh and sent me to this school,which they, know, again, it was a really good school, but you know, everybody was very
posh, everybody was very wealthy.
And so I never felt like I fitted in.
(01:54):
So I spent a lot of time creating a persona to try and cover it or, you know, avoidingthings.
Moving forward to when I was like in my late teens, early twenties, I got involved with a
a very bad group of people that I didn't realise at the time were, but through peoplepleasing ended up in prison.
(02:15):
So I spent four months in prison in Wandsworth, which is quite a high security prison.
I only ended up there because I was sent there from the court and I was supposed to thenbe moved off to a low security open facility for the four months because it was like I
shouldn't have been there.
But because it was close to home,
(02:37):
all my mates could get there really easy to visit me.
So I asked the question, do I have to move or can I stay here?
And it completely threw the entire prison service because they were going, well, yeah,nobody's ever asked that.
So I went through the experience.
(03:00):
There was a form, so I filled in this form and I stayed and so people could visit me.
because I was kind of a little bit of a freak in the system.
I had quite an OK time.
was fascinating in terms of what I learnt about myself and other people.
But yeah, was that.
So I came out of there kind of going, OK, so now what?
(03:23):
Because back then, you know, I'm 63 now, so like it's a long time ago.
And
the attitude was very, different.
So it's like, well, okay, there's a lot of doors that are now closed to me.
So what does that mean for me?
And I started looking, I discovered this person called Tony Robbins, and I bought everybook, I bought every cassette for people listening to this that don't know what they are,
(03:47):
they're the little plastic things that we all used to listen to music on.
And I started learning about life coaching, personal development, how you, NLP,
and that kind of thing and got involved with that.
On the way, I was working as an actor because again, it was something I could do withoutjudgment and without any issues on where I'd been or what I'd done.
(04:13):
And I ended up working at a finishing school in London, which at the time was globallyrecognized as the place to send your offspring to teach them about etiquette, deportment,
protocol.
And...
Again, being me, was always, I was always kind of like, say yes and figure it out later.
(04:33):
So because of that, any of the kind of slightly more challenging requests that came intothe school were sent my way.
And one of those was to work with Princess Diana because she had, she got married.
She was obviously exposed to a lot of media and a lot of attention, a lot of stress.
And because we were in Kensington, it was like a quick walk down the road to KensingtonPalace.
(04:58):
So I worked with her over about 18 months on general presentation, handling the negativityand the press and the attention, refocusing how she dealt with it, how she approached it,
and that kind of thing.
Did random things like working on personal hygiene with the Sultan of Brunei's helicopterpilot, which was slightly bizarre.
(05:25):
what else did I do?
I taught Prince Edward how to get in and out of a Range Rover in a kilt without flashing.
All sorts of random, absolutely, all sorts of random stuff.
And because of that, I kind of ended up with this very kind of, at the time it didn't seemlike it, but this very kind of glamorous clientele.
(05:46):
You know, it's like I'd go personal shopping with Joan Collins or I'd be doing amotivation session with Boy George or it was just,
But it was just normal because it was like, yeah, I'll do that.
Help me and yes, help tell them I'll be over.
So did that, moved from there back into some acting, then ended up meeting my husbandwhile I was acting.
(06:07):
And at the time I was married to a woman because I had, as I say, I had this very maledominated upbringing.
Being gay was never an option.
I was convinced that I'd either be killed or be completely disowned by everyone andeverything.
If I came out, met my husband, got to this pivotal moment of going, I had this voice in myhead going, you're a liar, you're a liar, you will always be a liar.
(06:33):
And I had this moment where it was like, can't do this anymore.
And so I came out, got divorced, lost everything in the divorce because I felt so guilty.
So I just walked away from everything.
My family were lovely, but I lost a lot of friends through it.
which was really difficult, moved to Lincolnshire where Christian comes from and was kindof like Billy No-Mates, just completely alone, suicidal because it was just all so awful.
(07:09):
So that was two very rough years before I kind of came out of that.
he's an English, he was an English teacher at the time and the school that he worked atwere looking for somebody to work with a particularly challenging group of teenagers that
were, was a boy who was severely autistic, there were twins who were oxygen starved atbirth, you know, was a real, some with behavioral issues.
(07:34):
And again, I kind of like, I can do that.
So
ended up working in the school, because of being like I am, I ended up doing a lot ofcounselling.
So I did some counselling training and some specialist training on autism, ADHD,challenging behaviours and all of this.
(07:55):
And that kind of then brought us to Covid.
And suddenly I was kind of left with all this time because the students that I had were,if they were in school, they were doing online lessons.
If they weren't in school, I had nothing to do.
And I just kind of sat and went, okay, I need to bring everything together.
And how do I do this?
(08:17):
And I thought about everything that I've done from, you know, from fashion styling toetiquette to business protocols to, you know, working with people on building their
businesses and their brands and their self image to life coaching, to dealing withrelationships to, and kind of went, where does this sit?
And it fundamentally,
(08:38):
Every single thing that everybody struggles with starts from their self-confidence.
Because if they don't have that belief in themselves to begin with, there's nowhere to go.
You know, if they're in a toxic relationship, if they have no self-confidence, they can'tfind the strength to leave it.
If they want to start a business, if they don't have that self-confidence, they can'tlaunch it.
(09:01):
If they've launched it and they're running it and they don't believe in themselves tobuild it, they can't expand it.
So it started from there and it goes into the big things, but it also goes into littlethings.
It's like I'm working with a woman at the moment who's just been promoted to a C-suiteboardroom level and she's the only woman in the boardroom.
(09:26):
She's convinced that nobody will listen to her, nobody will take her seriously.
So we've been working on the fact that, you know, she wouldn't have the job if shecouldn't and looking at her own self-worth.
But even down to, I've made her throw out the suits she wore for work in her previousrole, because she's attached to them as, but that's when I was that.
(09:46):
So it's like, no, you're going out, you're buying a wardrobe, or sort it, a capsulewardrobe that is for you now in this role that you're in.
This says you now.
Yeah, so it, yeah, so it's, that's, and that's the short version.
Bye bye.
I think you've just really hit a really interesting point there that she had theconfidence to get to the level that she was at and she fully believed in herself and had
(10:14):
the self-belief but then taking that next step that all of those demons came back and Ithink that happens for everybody and this is the point that people forget they think well
I'm confident now I should be confident in everything and that is just not how it works isit
No, absolutely not.
is, you know, this is the one fundamental flaw in being a human being because we work withprehistoric brains.
(10:39):
I mean, our brains, it's been scientifically examined.
They have not changed since our only threat was a saber-toothed tiger.
You know, it's still the same fundamental organ.
So it spends its entire time looking for threats, looking for potential dangers, lookingfor problems.
to keep us safe, to keep us protected, to stop us getting harmed in any way.
(11:02):
So with confidence, every time we've got something to do that we haven't done before, wego, well, if I had a bit more confidence, I'd probably do that.
Or, I don't think I'm confident enough to do that.
Or because our whole nervous system is going, no, no, you haven't done that.
So it might be dangerous, don't do it.
The actual truth about confidence is that you have to do the thing.
(11:27):
to be confident about it.
It's a retrospective mindset.
It's kind of an emotion, but it's a mindset.
It's something that has to be learned.
And you learn it from doing.
I know it's old cliche of feel the fear and do it anyway, but it's actually the reality.
You can't 100 % know that you can do something until you've done it.
(11:52):
You can be sure.
or can have a good idea or you can think, well, I've done that and that, so I can probablydo that.
But you can't be 100 % confident.
And the bigger the challenge, the more wobble there will be, the more butterflies therewill be, the more.
But how amazing when you can change that to go, well, actually, this means I'm doingsomething new.
(12:15):
This means I'm taking a risk.
This means I'm growing.
This feeling of, ugh, is actually amazing.
This is brilliant because it means something
Big is happening, rather than going, that feels like, I won't do it then.
Yeah.
And that's what it comes down to.
(12:37):
It's having that sense of certainty in yourself that you will be OK no matter what.
mean, what I often say to people, like you, Claire, I'm sure that during your life, therehave been times when you've been lying awake in the middle of the night going.
I can't do this or I don't know how to do this or I can't see a way out of this or yeah.
(12:59):
And yeah, absolutely.
And most people, know, maybe there's an odd rare one that hasn't, but I think the vastmajority of the human race have those moments.
You are here talking to me now, which tells me you have a 100 % success rate of gettingthrough and surviving everything that's ever been thrown at you.
(13:20):
You are undefeated.
at every bad experience, every problem, everything that could ever have happened to you,you are undefeated 100%.
I love that.
Love that mindset.
Yeah, it's true.
But I think when it comes to the confidence, I 100 % agree that it's learned by any brandnew experience is always going to be nerve wracking because it's brand new to you.
(13:47):
It's pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.
But if you can get to a place where you have sort of an underlying self belief that youwill be okay in whatever situation.
And also, I suppose,
getting comfortable with the fact that even if it doesn't work out, it's not, you know,that's not an issue.
(14:08):
The failure isn't really a thing.
It's just a learning opportunity and, and all of those things.
mean, like you said, through my journey in business, there has been a million times whereI've had to really push myself, dig deep and feel the fear and do it anyway.
But I've chosen to do that.
And what's helped me is every time that I have done that.
(14:29):
the next time, whatever it is, the next new situation I found myself in, I can look backand say, well, I've already done all of these new things and survived.
So I know that this one, one of my favourite terms is to get uncomfortable with beinguncomfortable.
Oh, absolutely.
It is.
It's trusting in yourself.
(14:49):
This is what I mean.
It's that self-belief that you will be okay no matter what happens.
know, what's the worst that can happen?
It's like, you know, it's like if you walk out on a stage in front of 5,000 people and youmuck it up.
Well, nobody's gonna die a day later, you know, half an hour later, the majority of peoplethat were there won't even remember.
(15:10):
You know, it doesn't matter.
It's having that...
trust that you will be okay no matter what happens.
The thing, the thing is with confidence, a lot of the time when people say, I want moreconfidence, they actually don't.
Because what they want is one of two things, they either want what I call, what I callgoop, they want the good opinion of other people, you know, they, they want to know that
(15:37):
they're not going to be laughed at, they're not going to be criticized, they're not goingto be judged, they're not going to, you know,
all of these things.
So they don't want confidence, they want a good opinion of other people.
Or they want a guarantee, they want certainty that it's going to work out exactly the waythey want it to work.
(15:57):
And again, there is no such thing as certainty.
And sometimes the way things work out is actually better than the way you were going tomake it work.
Exactly.
And sometimes even when things do go wrong and they don't go the way that you thought theywould, actually that's by far the best thing that could have ever happened to you.
I speak to so many people and it was true for me, you at some point you've been maderedundant or something has happened to this career life path that you put yourself on.
(16:24):
And in that moment, it might feel like the worst thing that could happen, but it alwaysputs you on a better path.
Yeah, absolutely.
I always think of it in terms of, if you put a destination in the satin app and you'vekind of got your destination of where you want to go to, but if it's somewhere new and
you're driving along and you think, oh, that looks pretty, I'm going to go down there, oryou see a nice pub and think, oh, yeah, let's stop off and have a drink and a sandwich or
(16:51):
something.
You know, it's like, it's great to have that destination and you need that sense ofcertainty in where you want to go.
Mm-hmm.
But it's about having the confidence to enjoy the journey and be able to stop off or takea detour or go, actually, that's close as well.
No, let's go there instead, because that looks more fun.
And just allowing for that.
(17:13):
Yeah.
And so if we look back at your journey, obviously you had that four months wobble in yourlife that was not necessarily what you had envisioned for yourself.
But that led you down to looking for alternative ways of, you know, working how you couldavoid the doors that had closed on you.
(17:35):
So
your life could have been completely different if you hadn't have gone through thatexperience for those four months.
But one thing that we're talking about confidence, obviously, and you have worked withsome huge names through the years.
And a lot of people would instantly be like, God, I would never have the confidence tohelp Princess Diana or all of those things.
(17:58):
So where do you think you found the confidence in those moments to just be like, well,that's no problem.
I'll go and see.
I'll die down the road and sort her out.
I think for me it was was that effem, I won't say it, but that kind of effem mentalitythat it was like, because I came out with that belief that at the time, you your life is
(18:26):
over, if you've been to prison, that's it, you know, you'll never work, you'll never haveanything, you'll be hated, you'll never be trusted by anybody, you'll never, but, you
know, all of this.
I hasten to add it was something fairly minor that I did.
I was transporting fake credit cards from them to customers and stuff and kind of didn'treally know but kind of knew.
(18:47):
So it was nothing terrible, terrible.
But no, think it was that I am gonna prove that this is not gonna finish me because itwasn't entirely my fault.
I own the fact that some of it was, but...
ultimately.
And it was like, I'm also putting it out there so that nobody can ever go, if you don't dothat for me, I'm going to tell them that you were inside.
(19:12):
You know, so it's always been out in the public domain.
you know, and I've been very much like that with everything, that it's like, if it's allout there, nobody can hold any of it against you.
And I think in terms of my resilience, that's where it came from, because it's likedealing with somebody like Princess Diana.
It was it was almost a case of
(19:33):
You think you've got problems?
Try to-
And it kind of, it weirdly, it weirdly kind of put me on a level with these people becausethey were as fascinated about that experience because to be fair, it's not an experience
that most people have.
(19:54):
And in my social circle, I'm the only one.
So it's not something that everybody experiences.
So they were interested to know what it was really like because everybody's
image of it is just what you see in films and TV shows and stuff and the reality isn't,you know, like with everything, the reality isn't like that.
(20:16):
So it kind of was a great leveller because their kind of expectations were kind of, thisis interesting.
What's, you know, and I wasn't a threat.
I wasn't somebody coming in.
going, I've done all these courses and I know all this stuff and I'm going to tell youneed to do this and you must do that.
(20:38):
But, you know, I could go in going, look, seriously, I've dealt with, like I do now, it's,always say, one of the first things I say to people when I start working with them is if I
say, I understand, I genuinely understand, you know, I've been through prison, I've beenthrough coming out, I've dealt with my mother's dementia and her death, I've dealt with
bereavement, I've dealt with divorce.
(20:59):
I've dealt with building and losing businesses.
I've built two that crashed and burned.
I've built one that my partner ran off with all the money and screwed me.
It's like, so when I say I understand, I'm not coming from, yes, I've read a book on it orI've done the course on it.
I'm going, actually, yeah, I have, so that I could help myself.
(21:21):
So now I can help you.
Yeah, you've had that lived experience.
And when we're talking about, like we said, know, Princess Diana, for instance, and thebig names, what I've experienced through my journey, and meeting people that I have
previously, you know, had on a pedestal, they're people that are further down the journey,or really inspirational for me.
(21:43):
But when you meet them, they are just the same as you or I.
And I think that really helped me the first couple of times where I met these
you know, inspirational people in my world.
And I thought, you started exactly where I started.
Everybody does.
The whole world is a level playing field.
And I think that can really help as well, especially in today's world where you have theinsta lifestyles and there's so much of the perfection online.
(22:11):
The reality is rarely shown.
And then you can get that comparisonitis, you know, you can get lost in all they're doingall of these things and I'm not there.
they're better than I am and it's just not the case at all and if you meet people saynever meet your idols don't they but it's because the bubble is burst
but that's the thing.
(22:32):
mean, that whole theory about never meeting your idols was the whole point that when youmeet them, you discover that actually they're flawed like everyone else.
They have their own issues like everyone else.
Yeah, they may have fame, they may have money, they might actually have the Lamborghini inthe big house as opposed to all the Instagrammers that just pose in front of one and
(22:52):
pretend.
But ultimately, yeah, they have the same fundamental worries.
They have relationship problems, they have business problems, they have emotional,physical, all the same things that everybody else deals with.
And it is, it's interesting when you meet different people.
And like you say, it's that terrible comparison thing.
(23:15):
But again, it's shifting it from going, well, look at them and look at me.
It's like, well, if they can do it, so can you.
But they've been doing it for 10 years.
I started this latest version of what I do about 18 months ago.
But I brought 40 years of knowledge and experience into that.
(23:40):
So, I've made progress a lot quicker, but it's not OK that's 18 months and why have I beengoing 18 months and I'm not where he is?
It's like, I've brought all of that with it.
You know, and that comes with experience, with contacts, with knowledge about how tomarket or what to do to build a business, how to react quickly if things are or aren't
(24:03):
working.
Being, one of the big things, being comfortable with who you are.
Because so many times when I'm working with people on their businesses and it's the samething that comes up that they go, well, if people meet me, they go, I didn't expect you to
be like.
And it's like, you know, they'll go on social media with these scripted kind of, I want tobe professional presentations.
(24:34):
And there's none of them in it.
You know, it's not, it's, know, social media is there to be social.
It's like, let people know who you are.
People are really mistrustful now with good reason.
You know, there are so many, I got scammed twice over Christmas and had to get PayPal toget my money back.
for things that I thought, that's nice and they disappeared.
So people are mistrustful and they need to see that you're a real person.
(24:59):
Yeah.
And again, I think that comes down to confidence and having the confidence and the f themattitude that you mentioned earlier that it can be daunting in the very beginning that not
everybody will like you, won't necessarily all like your true self.
But it's about having the attitude that actually that's a good thing.
(25:21):
I don't want to attract everybody.
I just want to attract the people that do like my energy and who I am and get me.
And having the confidence to then go out and be, I was going to use that, the hot word,authentic, but be your true self.
yeah, but it is true.
mean, I know, yeah, I know authentic gets overused, but it is, it's so important just tobe yourself.
(25:47):
And yeah, it's a sad reality and one that you have to accept.
If you are gonna go into business, you are gonna have to use social media.
It's, you know, it's a given.
Yes, there are other routes, but it's a big part of it.
The second...
you put your head up and go, hello, I'm here and this is what I do.
(26:08):
You are open to the people that don't like you or that think, you know, think you're ascam or that think you're talking, filling your own choice of words, you know, all of
this.
And it's you, you know, I won't lie to begin with, it will hurt and it will make youthink, I better not do that then.
(26:28):
But you have to get past that.
And again, this comes back to confidence.
It's like you have to be okay with, you know, it's like you could do the same.
I mean, again, I suppose if this comes from my acting background, you can do exactly thesame performance 300 times and get 300 different responses.
(26:48):
You know, I loved it, I hated it, it was okay, it was boring, it was brilliant, it was,you know, and it's the same with people.
You have to be able to get to that point where your self-belief says it's about them andtheir perception.
not about me, they're not right for me.
You know it's like, it's like when you put out offers and things, sometimes I'll put athing out about you know I'm thinking of doing this and people go god yeah yeah yeah yeah
(27:15):
yeah so it's like fine okay we'll work on that.
You put something else out it gets nothing, you can either go god I'm so rubbish I'm afailure I can't know you about or you go okay it's not the right time for that I'll just
I'll put that on hold keep that for later not the right time yeah.
No, leave it for now and move on.
(27:36):
I think that comes with experience, lived experience.
So I remember, and I talk about this quite often, the very first time in my business thatI lost a client.
That was such, it felt like such a personal attack to me.
It wasn't at all.
actually had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of our work.
It was purely something that suited the client better.
(28:00):
But yeah, I really felt it.
took it personally.
had to leave the office and go and phone my husband in tears, like, my God, is this theend?
You know, the panic.
But that was the very first, it was a new situation for me.
Now, in reality, I don't blink an eye because I know that there'll be more coming.
It's nothing to do with me.
(28:21):
It's a them situation.
But I think it does come with lived experience that each time you face these things and ifyou put an offer out and it doesn't...
do well.
I think in the beginning that is a hard thing to overcome but once you've done it 10 timesand realise that not everything's going to land as you maybe thought it would and you
(28:43):
learn from it and move on, it's very different emotions that you'll feel the first time tothe 10th time.
So it's about knowing that and working through those emotions isn't it?
Yeah, no it is.
It's, as I say, all of it comes down to that, to your sense of self and self-belief.
And I tend to talk about trust quite a lot because I think it is, it's that trust inyourself that you will be okay no matter what happens.
(29:13):
And if you can have that sense of certainty, which, you know, it's kind of what I wassaying to you about the experiences that you've been through, that you are 100 %
undefeated.
So,
you you can take all that proof with you into something and it's like, okay, so you putout an offer and nobody wants it.
(29:33):
What's the worst case with that?
You know, okay, it's not the right thing for that moment.
You can try something else.
Or what is it about it that's not quite right?
Is it your approach?
Is it, you know, a lot of times, I was talking to a woman the other day about her
social media and it's she was so you know she was like I'm doing it all right I'm doingeverything that I was told on this marketing course and I'm doing this and I'm doing that
(30:02):
and it's like yeah but look at it from somebody else's point of view not you looking at itlook at it from a stranger or a potential client it's all business it's all I do this I do
that I offer this I offer that I do this there's no there's no her in it there's nothere's no there's no
(30:23):
interaction, there's no genuine getting to know that person.
equally with the business posts, there's nothing about the clients.
It's all what she does and what she offers, what's in know, any potential client islooking, going, what's in it for me?
What can you do for me?
(30:44):
How can you make me feel better?
And that's missing.
And the whole point of social media
is get social, let people see who you are.
It's like with Facebook having the professional page though that you can promote businessbut you can also show yourself.
It's so powerful because people can go, I like them or, they're quite interesting or,they've got a dog, I've got a dog, I'm excited.
(31:13):
I've wanted to try that wine, that's not, I wonder what it's like.
And you can start.
labels, are you?
Yeah, always, always, always, you know, and it is, all those kind of things, but it's,it's, they know, they feel like they know you, and then they're more interested to maybe
get in contact or respond to something.
(31:36):
But it's, yeah, you know, if...
needed than ever now because there are so many scams and people have been burnt so manytimes that it's even more important for them to really feel like they have a relationship
with you and they know you already.
And I think in so many industries, it's a real personal choice whether they think they'regoing to get on with you, especially in our industries when it is coping on things.
(32:01):
Am I actually even going to get on with you and...
feel like it's going to work and you need to be showing your personality for them to beable to make that informed decision.
yeah, I think it's really important and people in certain industries, especially peoplefeel like they have to be a very, you know, certain persona, they need to be professional,
(32:24):
they need to wear the suits and ties.
And actually, that's, that's just not how it is in today's age.
You know, you can be whoever you want to be.
yeah, it's about, again, it's the mindset, it's the approach.
People, we want to be helped, we don't wanna be lectured, whatever it is, even if it'sdoctors, if it's lawyers, it's, even the big heavy stuff, I don't want someone in a suit
(32:53):
to sit there and lecture me, I want them to help me with the problem that I've come tothem with.
And it's that shift.
And as I say, it's showing the person.
It's like, if you don't like me, that's fine.
I'm okay with that.
If you don't want fierce self-confidence and a slightly warped sense of humor, again, I'mnot the right person for you.
(33:15):
If you don't want to be called out, if you're pussyfooting around and not doing what yousaid you were gonna do, again, don't come to me.
That's fine.
I'm okay with that because I'm there for the people that do.
Yeah.
You know, one of the things that I've been told I need to get put on t-shirts for some ofmy clients is I'm not a good girl and that's okay.
Because, again, so much of the stuff that comes up is like from when they were littlebeing told, no, good girls don't do that.
(33:41):
Good girls don't behave like that.
Good girls don't answer that.
Good girls don't do that.
But it is, it's being okay with not being everybody's first choice.
But for the people that are right for you,
if you show yourself they will come to you because they can see who you are and they'llapproach and again don't even get hung up about likes and comments and stuff because a lot
(34:08):
of people don't always comment they don't always like but they follow and they what
I call them lurkers.
they don't, they have never, and so many of my clients have come to me this way.
They've never engaged in anything that I've put out.
And then they just pop into my DMs one day or send me an email.
I've been following you for X amount of time.
(34:29):
And I would really love to have a conversation.
And in the beginning, again, it can feel like, you know, I'm not getting, I've only had 10likes on this post.
must not be what people are wanting, but it's having that, the trust in yourself.
it does a lot come down to trust for sure.
no it is, it's that, that again is another big thing with that, that people go, no,nobody, nobody's commenting, so I must be doing something wrong.
(34:56):
But again, I always say to people, well, how often do you read things in scroll paths, butyou don't necessarily like it or put a comment, you know, if it's late at night or it's
first thing in the morning or you're, you know, you're on the train and you hit yourstation or you're just bored, you don't comment on every single thing you read.
you're aware of it, so why should it be different for other people?
(35:17):
You know, put yourself, put yourself over there briefly as well, is another thing thatthat really helps.
Yeah, it does.
Now, time is going on, but I can't not speak.
No, no, no.
It's just an amazing conversation I could have all day.
(35:38):
But no, this is the thing.
This is the only issue I have with podcasts is I have to limit the conversation.
And honestly, so many times I could speak all day.
But one thing I really want to
speak about with you because you mentioned it a lot when you were telling us your journeyis about being a people pleaser and how that didn't serve you well.
And realistically, it never serves anybody well.
(36:01):
But it's such a common trait.
I think especially so I'm a huge empath.
And for me, I really struggled with not always being able to give everybody what theyneeded.
So how did you overcome that?
And how did you start to realize that actually that wasn't a trait that was serving you?
I think, obviously, ending up in prison was a big hint that maybe this wasn't the best wayto be.
(36:28):
But, no, but in all seriousness, it was, in as much as it gave me time to start thinkingabout it.
And it's like, a lot of the time, people don't even realise that they're people pleasing.
because they think that they're being these giving people and that they're being very, youknow, there's this sense of humility and being humble because I'm just giving of my, you
(36:56):
know, I'm giving of my time and I'm giving them my energy and I'm doing all this for otherpeople and I'm putting myself last and doesn't that make me a good person?
It's like, no, it makes you Victorian.
It's just, you know, but it is, and they think that this is, you know, this is, it'scoming from a place of being good and being
(37:16):
and being generous and it's actually coming from quite a selfish place because you'regetting the satisfaction of doing all this and it's not a healthy thing.
It comes down to the six human needs that Tony Robbins used to talk about when I did mytraining with him, we did quite a lot of work on it.
(37:38):
But it's this need that everybody has.
You have these six human needs of certainty, uncertainty, significance.
growth, love and connection and contribution.
And you will meet them however you can.
And you can meet them in a good, healthy, beneficial way, or you can meet them in a toxic,really negative way.
(38:01):
Either way it will happen.
And I just felt, as I say, ending up in prison, go, hang on, this is ridiculous.
What have I done to get here?
And I realized that it was trying to be liked, trying to fit in.
trying to be part of a group that actually I didn't really, when I sat back and thoughtabout it, didn't want to be involved with because I didn't really like them anyway.
(38:24):
And it was about shifting that view from, want to help people, I don't want to pleasepeople.
And there's a big difference.
it gets slipped, it slips through because it's, people pleasing is a sneaky,
(38:44):
kind of trait because you don't realize that you do it until you're so far into it thatit's really hard to get out of.
You become this person that just always says yes, always does it.
It becomes resentful and quite often bitter to a certain degree, even though you're doingall this stuff and you keep doing more of it to try and make yourself feel better.
(39:07):
And all it does is breed more resentment, more stress, more anxiety, more pressure.
until you explode and then all the people that you've been pleasing look at you and go,well, what's wrong with you then?
Because you dare to say no or you blow up.
So yeah, I just, did a lot of work on why do I do that?
(39:30):
How does that happen?
And it was that awful thing of spending time actually saying no.
which was really, really hard.
And again, it's one of those things that people struggle with saying no.
And that's where I started saying no is a complete sentence.
And you have to just say no.
(39:52):
you know, can you do it?
No.
Because the second you open up with I wish I could but, or I haven't got time, or it opensup that space for negotiation and they can go, oh, well, if you haven't got time now,
could you do it tomorrow?
Or.
you know, well, if you want to, I'm sure we can make it work.
When can you do it?
But it opens up negotiation, whereas no, flat no.
(40:16):
Yeah.
And it was uncomfortable in the beginning.
Those very first few, I remember, because I was exactly the same as you when I wasyounger.
For me, it was definitely trying to fill my own bucket, I suppose, and trying to makemyself feel better by making other people and I was so desperate for people to like me
(40:38):
when I was younger.
So for me, if I could do it, if anyone asked me to do anything, I would say yes, I'dfigure it out.
in the hope that they would then like me and that would give me something.
So when I figured all of this out, I was probably maybe early 20s, I think, when I reallystarted pushing back.
And it's exactly what you said, well, my God, what's wrong with you?
(41:00):
And like the shock look on your face, like who is this person that's suddenly saying no?
And then for me, I think I would say this about absolutely everything in life.
It's a balance and you want a pendulum.
And I was so far in the always say yes phase.
And I was so far into the no phase.
(41:21):
And I was like, I opened this box and suddenly I was saying no to just absolutelyeverything, trying to determine my authority, I suppose, and that I wasn't able to say no.
And then finally, I managed to settle nicely in the middle and, you know, I yes to theopportunities and the things that I want to genuinely help with.
But I'm comfortable enough to say no when I see it's not serving me, was only going to beserving them.
(41:46):
So it's a journey for sure.
yeah, it's, it's a process, but it is, and it does, it feels awful, but it's, you know,it's like, it's like the flow of energy.
You have to do that.
You know, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of like giving up alcohol or giving up smoking orgiving, you know, any addiction, you have to have that moment of complete cold turkey, you
(42:09):
know, and if you do say no to everything and then you kind of...
Like you say, you start to open up a little bit and go, actually, okay, now I'll say yesto that.
Because it's not, you know, not everybody's not expecting me to do everything orexpecting.
yes with no ulterior motive apart from just to help them.
So I'm not saying yes anymore because I'm desperate for you to like me or, you know, anyof that negative emotion attached to it's purely just because I would like to help you.
(42:38):
But again, it was a journey and I think it's something that we have to continuously workon, isn't it?
All of these, these traits in ourselves, it's an ever ongoing journey.
and especially if you if you are starting out in business, if you're, you know, if you'renew, and you're just starting the the kind of fear of saying no, you know, it's like if
(43:01):
somebody says, well, you know, particularly if you're doing you're doing coaching orholistic healing or anything like that.
And somebody says, well, can you see me at nine o'clock tonight?
That the kind of fear of going well, actually, no, is really great, you know, you end up
saying that you'll work weekends, you'll work any time day or night just because, god,because what if they say no, I might have lost a client and, and, and so actually working
(43:27):
on those boundaries again is, is something that, is really important.
It's that thing of going, okay, make yourself less available to make yourself morevaluable.
And it's a really tough thing to learn.
But again, it's really useful and if you can start from there, it only strengthens yourbusiness as you go forward.
(43:52):
Yeah, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got when I first started business was don'tsay yes to every client that wants to work with you.
And I remember them telling me that and me thinking, well, why would you ever turn moneyaway?
and they explained the reasons and, I listened, I did take it on board and I listened andthere was only a couple of times in those early years that I went against my better
(44:16):
judgment and agreed to work with people.
And they were the biggest headaches.
they, you know, paid you the least money because they're always the tightest.
it's, again, it's a, it's a lesson you've got to learn that actually, you do need to trustyour judgment and your gut and don't just say yes to everyone for the money, because the
money will come anyway, you might just have to wait for the next client.
(44:41):
yeah, yeah, no, again, it's a lesson to learn and the earlier you can learn it, the lessgrief you go through.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ian, thank you so much for joining me.
Honestly, I've loved our conversation and genuinely feel like I could speak to you allday.
thank you.
It's been lovely.
If people are wanting to learn more about you or see how they can work with you, where arethe best channels for them to come and find you on?
(45:07):
either the website, which is IanNortonCoaching.com or to be honest, the best thing is tojust find me as Ian Norton on Facebook because that, as I say, that, is everything about
me.
There's, some of my story.
There's, there's me day to day.
So, you know what you'd be letting yourself in for.
Well, I'm going to get now go and find a wine bottle and zoom in on the label and see whatyou drink.
(45:33):
plenty of those.
But yeah, no, that is probably the easiest because that is, as you say, Facebook haseverything, all the website.
But yeah, no, it's been lovely.
Good.
Thank you so much.
I'll put the links in the show notes for everyone.
But thank you all to our listeners.
I hope you have enjoyed this lovely conversation with Ian, and I will see you all nextweek.
(45:55):
Take care.
everybody.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Bold Blueprint.
Today I am joined by Ian Norton, the Confidence King.
He is an elite confidence coach and I'm so thrilled to have him today because honestly,waiting till you hear his journey, it has been a ride and I cannot wait to share with you
how he got to where he is today and how he now supports people in building that confidenceto move their businesses forward.
(00:25):
So Ian, thank you so much for joining me today.
It's an absolute pleasure.
I am delighted.
It's great.
Good.
So to start us off, do you want to talk about the journey that you've been on, how yousort of ended up where you are today and if there was any specific pivotal moments that
led you here?
long have you got?
(00:47):
Yeah, it's a long and varied story.
Basically, Charm 2 was great.
I didn't come from a terrible, abusive family or anything.
My family were great.
They were very military.
My dad was ex-Navy, my brother was ex-army.
It was a very male-dominated business, kind family environment.
(01:09):
But it was loving, it was friendly.
I had everything I needed.
School was fine.
That was all okay.
But I was a real people pleaser.
And I, for reasons which will become evident as I go through my story, I never felt like Ifitted in.
And my parents were very much, they worked really, really hard and they ran fish and chipshops.
(01:33):
And to better everything, they then moved us from South London.
to the heart of Surrey in Cobham, which was very, very posh and sent me to this school,which they, know, again, it was a really good school, but you know, everybody was very
posh, everybody was very wealthy.
And so I never felt like I fitted in.
(01:54):
So I spent a lot of time creating a persona to try and cover it or, you know, avoidingthings.
Moving forward to when I was like in my late teens, early twenties, I got involved with a
a very bad group of people that I didn't realise at the time were, but through peoplepleasing ended up in prison.
(02:15):
So I spent four months in prison in Wandsworth, which is quite a high security prison.
I only ended up there because I was sent there from the court and I was supposed to thenbe moved off to a low security open facility for the four months because it was like I
shouldn't have been there.
But because it was close to home,
(02:37):
all my mates could get there really easy to visit me.
So I asked the question, do I have to move or can I stay here?
And it completely threw the entire prison service because they were going, well, yeah,nobody's ever asked that.
So I went through the experience.
(03:00):
There was a form, so I filled in this form and I stayed and so people could visit me.
because I was kind of a little bit of a freak in the system.
I had quite an OK time.
was fascinating in terms of what I learnt about myself and other people.
But yeah, was that.
So I came out of there kind of going, OK, so now what?
(03:23):
Because back then, you know, I'm 63 now, so like it's a long time ago.
And
the attitude was very, different.
So it's like, well, okay, there's a lot of doors that are now closed to me.
So what does that mean for me?
And I started looking, I discovered this person called Tony Robbins, and I bought everybook, I bought every cassette for people listening to this that don't know what they are,
(03:47):
they're the little plastic things that we all used to listen to music on.
And I started learning about life coaching, personal development, how you, NLP,
and that kind of thing and got involved with that.
On the way, I was working as an actor because again, it was something I could do withoutjudgment and without any issues on where I'd been or what I'd done.
(04:13):
And I ended up working at a finishing school in London, which at the time was globallyrecognized as the place to send your offspring to teach them about etiquette, deportment,
protocol.
And...
Again, being me, was always, I was always kind of like, say yes and figure it out later.
(04:33):
So because of that, any of the kind of slightly more challenging requests that came intothe school were sent my way.
And one of those was to work with Princess Diana because she had, she got married.
She was obviously exposed to a lot of media and a lot of attention, a lot of stress.
And because we were in Kensington, it was like a quick walk down the road to KensingtonPalace.
(04:58):
So I worked with her over about 18 months on general presentation, handling the negativityand the press and the attention, refocusing how she dealt with it, how she approached it,
and that kind of thing.
Did random things like working on personal hygiene with the Sultan of Brunei's helicopterpilot, which was slightly bizarre.
(05:25):
what else did I do?
I taught Prince Edward how to get in and out of a Range Rover in a kilt without flashing.
All sorts of random, absolutely, all sorts of random stuff.
And because of that, I kind of ended up with this very kind of, at the time it didn't seemlike it, but this very kind of glamorous clientele.
(05:46):
You know, it's like I'd go personal shopping with Joan Collins or I'd be doing amotivation session with Boy George or it was just,
But it was just normal because it was like, yeah, I'll do that.
Help me and yes, help tell them I'll be over.
So did that, moved from there back into some acting, then ended up meeting my husbandwhile I was acting.
(06:07):
And at the time I was married to a woman because I had, as I say, I had this very maledominated upbringing.
Being gay was never an option.
I was convinced that I'd either be killed or be completely disowned by everyone andeverything.
If I came out, met my husband, got to this pivotal moment of going, I had this voice in myhead going, you're a liar, you're a liar, you will always be a liar.
(06:33):
And I had this moment where it was like, can't do this anymore.
And so I came out, got divorced, lost everything in the divorce because I felt so guilty.
So I just walked away from everything.
My family were lovely, but I lost a lot of friends through it.
which was really difficult, moved to Lincolnshire where Christian comes from and was kindof like Billy No-Mates, just completely alone, suicidal because it was just all so awful.
(07:09):
So that was two very rough years before I kind of came out of that.
he's an English, he was an English teacher at the time and the school that he worked atwere looking for somebody to work with a particularly challenging group of teenagers that
were, was a boy who was severely autistic, there were twins who were oxygen starved atbirth, you know, was a real, some with behavioral issues.
(07:34):
And again, I kind of like, I can do that.
So
ended up working in the school, because of being like I am, I ended up doing a lot ofcounselling.
So I did some counselling training and some specialist training on autism, ADHD,challenging behaviours and all of this.
(07:55):
And that kind of then brought us to Covid.
And suddenly I was kind of left with all this time because the students that I had were,if they were in school, they were doing online lessons.
If they weren't in school, I had nothing to do.
And I just kind of sat and went, okay, I need to bring everything together.
And how do I do this?
(08:17):
And I thought about everything that I've done from, you know, from fashion styling toetiquette to business protocols to, you know, working with people on building their
businesses and their brands and their self image to life coaching, to dealing withrelationships to, and kind of went, where does this sit?
And it fundamentally,
(08:38):
Every single thing that everybody struggles with starts from their self-confidence.
Because if they don't have that belief in themselves to begin with, there's nowhere to go.
You know, if they're in a toxic relationship, if they have no self-confidence, they can'tfind the strength to leave it.
If they want to start a business, if they don't have that self-confidence, they can'tlaunch it.
(09:01):
If they've launched it and they're running it and they don't believe in themselves tobuild it, they can't expand it.
So it started from there and it goes into the big things, but it also goes into littlethings.
It's like I'm working with a woman at the moment who's just been promoted to a C-suiteboardroom level and she's the only woman in the boardroom.
(09:26):
She's convinced that nobody will listen to her, nobody will take her seriously.
So we've been working on the fact that, you know, she wouldn't have the job if shecouldn't and looking at her own self-worth.
But even down to, I've made her throw out the suits she wore for work in her previousrole, because she's attached to them as, but that's when I was that.
(09:46):
So it's like, no, you're going out, you're buying a wardrobe, or sort it, a capsulewardrobe that is for you now in this role that you're in.
This says you now.
Yeah, so it, yeah, so it's, that's, and that's the short version.
Bye bye.
I think you've just really hit a really interesting point there that she had theconfidence to get to the level that she was at and she fully believed in herself and had
(10:14):
the self-belief but then taking that next step that all of those demons came back and Ithink that happens for everybody and this is the point that people forget they think well
I'm confident now I should be confident in everything and that is just not how it works isit
No, absolutely not.
is, you know, this is the one fundamental flaw in being a human being because we work withprehistoric brains.
(10:39):
I mean, our brains, it's been scientifically examined.
They have not changed since our only threat was a saber-toothed tiger.
You know, it's still the same fundamental organ.
So it spends its entire time looking for threats, looking for potential dangers, lookingfor problems.
to keep us safe, to keep us protected, to stop us getting harmed in any way.
(11:02):
So with confidence, every time we've got something to do that we haven't done before, wego, well, if I had a bit more confidence, I'd probably do that.
Or, I don't think I'm confident enough to do that.
Or because our whole nervous system is going, no, no, you haven't done that.
So it might be dangerous, don't do it.
The actual truth about confidence is that you have to do the thing.
(11:27):
to be confident about it.
It's a retrospective mindset.
It's kind of an emotion, but it's a mindset.
It's something that has to be learned.
And you learn it from doing.
I know it's old cliche of feel the fear and do it anyway, but it's actually the reality.
You can't 100 % know that you can do something until you've done it.
(11:52):
You can be sure.
or can have a good idea or you can think, well, I've done that and that, so I can probablydo that.
But you can't be 100 % confident.
And the bigger the challenge, the more wobble there will be, the more butterflies therewill be, the more.
But how amazing when you can change that to go, well, actually, this means I'm doingsomething new.
(12:15):
This means I'm taking a risk.
This means I'm growing.
This feeling of, ugh, is actually amazing.
This is brilliant because it means something
Big is happening, rather than going, that feels like, I won't do it then.
Yeah.
And that's what it comes down to.
(12:37):
It's having that sense of certainty in yourself that you will be OK no matter what.
mean, what I often say to people, like you, Claire, I'm sure that during your life, therehave been times when you've been lying awake in the middle of the night going.
I can't do this or I don't know how to do this or I can't see a way out of this or yeah.
(12:59):
And yeah, absolutely.
And most people, know, maybe there's an odd rare one that hasn't, but I think the vastmajority of the human race have those moments.
You are here talking to me now, which tells me you have a 100 % success rate of gettingthrough and surviving everything that's ever been thrown at you.
(13:20):
You are undefeated.
at every bad experience, every problem, everything that could ever have happened to you,you are undefeated 100%.
I love that.
Love that mindset.
Yeah, it's true.
But I think when it comes to the confidence, I 100 % agree that it's learned by any brandnew experience is always going to be nerve wracking because it's brand new to you.
(13:47):
It's pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.
But if you can get to a place where you have sort of an underlying self belief that youwill be okay in whatever situation.
And also, I suppose,
getting comfortable with the fact that even if it doesn't work out, it's not, you know,that's not an issue.
(14:08):
The failure isn't really a thing.
It's just a learning opportunity and, and all of those things.
mean, like you said, through my journey in business, there has been a million times whereI've had to really push myself, dig deep and feel the fear and do it anyway.
But I've chosen to do that.
And what's helped me is every time that I have done that.
(14:29):
the next time, whatever it is, the next new situation I found myself in, I can look backand say, well, I've already done all of these new things and survived.
So I know that this one, one of my favourite terms is to get uncomfortable with beinguncomfortable.
Oh, absolutely.
It is.
It's trusting in yourself.
(14:49):
This is what I mean.
It's that self-belief that you will be okay no matter what happens.
know, what's the worst that can happen?
It's like, you know, it's like if you walk out on a stage in front of 5,000 people and youmuck it up.
Well, nobody's gonna die a day later, you know, half an hour later, the majority of peoplethat were there won't even remember.
(15:10):
You know, it doesn't matter.
It's having that...
trust that you will be okay no matter what happens.
The thing, the thing is with confidence, a lot of the time when people say, I want moreconfidence, they actually don't.
Because what they want is one of two things, they either want what I call, what I callgoop, they want the good opinion of other people, you know, they, they want to know that
(15:37):
they're not going to be laughed at, they're not going to be criticized, they're not goingto be judged, they're not going to, you know,
all of these things.
So they don't want confidence, they want a good opinion of other people.
Or they want a guarantee, they want certainty that it's going to work out exactly the waythey want it to work.
(15:57):
And again, there is no such thing as certainty.
And sometimes the way things work out is actually better than the way you were going tomake it work.
Exactly.
And sometimes even when things do go wrong and they don't go the way that you thought theywould, actually that's by far the best thing that could have ever happened to you.
I speak to so many people and it was true for me, you at some point you've been maderedundant or something has happened to this career life path that you put yourself on.
(16:24):
And in that moment, it might feel like the worst thing that could happen, but it alwaysputs you on a better path.
Yeah, absolutely.
I always think of it in terms of, if you put a destination in the satin app and you'vekind of got your destination of where you want to go to, but if it's somewhere new and
you're driving along and you think, oh, that looks pretty, I'm going to go down there, oryou see a nice pub and think, oh, yeah, let's stop off and have a drink and a sandwich or
(16:51):
something.
You know, it's like, it's great to have that destination and you need that sense ofcertainty in where you want to go.
Mm-hmm.
But it's about having the confidence to enjoy the journey and be able to stop off or takea detour or go, actually, that's close as well.
No, let's go there instead, because that looks more fun.
And just allowing for that.
(17:13):
Yeah.
And so if we look back at your journey, obviously you had that four months wobble in yourlife that was not necessarily what you had envisioned for yourself.
But that led you down to looking for alternative ways of, you know, working how you couldavoid the doors that had closed on you.
(17:35):
So
your life could have been completely different if you hadn't have gone through thatexperience for those four months.
But one thing that we're talking about confidence, obviously, and you have worked withsome huge names through the years.
And a lot of people would instantly be like, God, I would never have the confidence tohelp Princess Diana or all of those things.
(17:58):
So where do you think you found the confidence in those moments to just be like, well,that's no problem.
I'll go and see.
I'll die down the road and sort her out.
I think for me it was was that effem, I won't say it, but that kind of effem mentalitythat it was like, because I came out with that belief that at the time, you your life is
(18:26):
over, if you've been to prison, that's it, you know, you'll never work, you'll never haveanything, you'll be hated, you'll never be trusted by anybody, you'll never, but, you
know, all of this.
I hasten to add it was something fairly minor that I did.
I was transporting fake credit cards from them to customers and stuff and kind of didn'treally know but kind of knew.
(18:47):
So it was nothing terrible, terrible.
But no, think it was that I am gonna prove that this is not gonna finish me because itwasn't entirely my fault.
I own the fact that some of it was, but...
ultimately.
And it was like, I'm also putting it out there so that nobody can ever go, if you don't dothat for me, I'm going to tell them that you were inside.
(19:12):
You know, so it's always been out in the public domain.
you know, and I've been very much like that with everything, that it's like, if it's allout there, nobody can hold any of it against you.
And I think in terms of my resilience, that's where it came from, because it's likedealing with somebody like Princess Diana.
It was it was almost a case of
(19:33):
You think you've got problems?
Try to-
And it kind of, it weirdly, it weirdly kind of put me on a level with these people becausethey were as fascinated about that experience because to be fair, it's not an experience
that most people have.
(19:54):
And in my social circle, I'm the only one.
So it's not something that everybody experiences.
So they were interested to know what it was really like because everybody's
image of it is just what you see in films and TV shows and stuff and the reality isn't,you know, like with everything, the reality isn't like that.
(20:16):
So it kind of was a great leveller because their kind of expectations were kind of, thisis interesting.
What's, you know, and I wasn't a threat.
I wasn't somebody coming in.
going, I've done all these courses and I know all this stuff and I'm going to tell youneed to do this and you must do that.
(20:38):
But, you know, I could go in going, look, seriously, I've dealt with, like I do now, it's,always say, one of the first things I say to people when I start working with them is if I
say, I understand, I genuinely understand, you know, I've been through prison, I've beenthrough coming out, I've dealt with my mother's dementia and her death, I've dealt with
bereavement, I've dealt with divorce.
(20:59):
I've dealt with building and losing businesses.
I've built two that crashed and burned.
I've built one that my partner ran off with all the money and screwed me.
It's like, so when I say I understand, I'm not coming from, yes, I've read a book on it orI've done the course on it.
I'm going, actually, yeah, I have, so that I could help myself.
(21:21):
So now I can help you.
Yeah, you've had that lived experience.
And when we're talking about, like we said, know, Princess Diana, for instance, and thebig names, what I've experienced through my journey, and meeting people that I have
previously, you know, had on a pedestal, they're people that are further down the journey,or really inspirational for me.
(21:43):
But when you meet them, they are just the same as you or I.
And I think that really helped me the first couple of times where I met these
you know, inspirational people in my world.
And I thought, you started exactly where I started.
Everybody does.
The whole world is a level playing field.
And I think that can really help as well, especially in today's world where you have theinsta lifestyles and there's so much of the perfection online.
(22:11):
The reality is rarely shown.
And then you can get that comparisonitis, you know, you can get lost in all they're doingall of these things and I'm not there.
they're better than I am and it's just not the case at all and if you meet people saynever meet your idols don't they but it's because the bubble is burst
but that's the thing.
(22:32):
mean, that whole theory about never meeting your idols was the whole point that when youmeet them, you discover that actually they're flawed like everyone else.
They have their own issues like everyone else.
Yeah, they may have fame, they may have money, they might actually have the Lamborghini inthe big house as opposed to all the Instagrammers that just pose in front of one and
(22:52):
pretend.
But ultimately, yeah, they have the same fundamental worries.
They have relationship problems, they have business problems, they have emotional,physical, all the same things that everybody else deals with.
And it is, it's interesting when you meet different people.
And like you say, it's that terrible comparison thing.
(23:15):
But again, it's shifting it from going, well, look at them and look at me.
It's like, well, if they can do it, so can you.
But they've been doing it for 10 years.
I started this latest version of what I do about 18 months ago.
But I brought 40 years of knowledge and experience into that.
(23:40):
So, I've made progress a lot quicker, but it's not OK that's 18 months and why have I beengoing 18 months and I'm not where he is?
It's like, I've brought all of that with it.
You know, and that comes with experience, with contacts, with knowledge about how tomarket or what to do to build a business, how to react quickly if things are or aren't
(24:03):
working.
Being, one of the big things, being comfortable with who you are.
Because so many times when I'm working with people on their businesses and it's the samething that comes up that they go, well, if people meet me, they go, I didn't expect you to
be like.
And it's like, you know, they'll go on social media with these scripted kind of, I want tobe professional presentations.
(24:34):
And there's none of them in it.
You know, it's not, it's, know, social media is there to be social.
It's like, let people know who you are.
People are really mistrustful now with good reason.
You know, there are so many, I got scammed twice over Christmas and had to get PayPal toget my money back.
for things that I thought, that's nice and they disappeared.
So people are mistrustful and they need to see that you're a real person.
(24:59):
Yeah.
And again, I think that comes down to confidence and having the confidence and the f themattitude that you mentioned earlier that it can be daunting in the very beginning that not
everybody will like you, won't necessarily all like your true self.
But it's about having the attitude that actually that's a good thing.
(25:21):
I don't want to attract everybody.
I just want to attract the people that do like my energy and who I am and get me.
And having the confidence to then go out and be, I was going to use that, the hot word,authentic, but be your true self.
yeah, but it is true.
mean, I know, yeah, I know authentic gets overused, but it is, it's so important just tobe yourself.
(25:47):
And yeah, it's a sad reality and one that you have to accept.
If you are gonna go into business, you are gonna have to use social media.
It's, you know, it's a given.
Yes, there are other routes, but it's a big part of it.
The second...
you put your head up and go, hello, I'm here and this is what I do.
(26:08):
You are open to the people that don't like you or that think, you know, think you're ascam or that think you're talking, filling your own choice of words, you know, all of
this.
And it's you, you know, I won't lie to begin with, it will hurt and it will make youthink, I better not do that then.
(26:28):
But you have to get past that.
And again, this comes back to confidence.
It's like you have to be okay with, you know, it's like you could do the same.
I mean, again, I suppose if this comes from my acting background, you can do exactly thesame performance 300 times and get 300 different responses.
(26:48):
You know, I loved it, I hated it, it was okay, it was boring, it was brilliant, it was,you know, and it's the same with people.
You have to be able to get to that point where your self-belief says it's about them andtheir perception.
not about me, they're not right for me.
You know it's like, it's like when you put out offers and things, sometimes I'll put athing out about you know I'm thinking of doing this and people go god yeah yeah yeah yeah
(27:15):
yeah so it's like fine okay we'll work on that.
You put something else out it gets nothing, you can either go god I'm so rubbish I'm afailure I can't know you about or you go okay it's not the right time for that I'll just
I'll put that on hold keep that for later not the right time yeah.
No, leave it for now and move on.
(27:36):
I think that comes with experience, lived experience.
So I remember, and I talk about this quite often, the very first time in my business thatI lost a client.
That was such, it felt like such a personal attack to me.
It wasn't at all.
actually had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of our work.
It was purely something that suited the client better.
(28:00):
But yeah, I really felt it.
took it personally.
had to leave the office and go and phone my husband in tears, like, my God, is this theend?
You know, the panic.
But that was the very first, it was a new situation for me.
Now, in reality, I don't blink an eye because I know that there'll be more coming.
It's nothing to do with me.
(28:21):
It's a them situation.
But I think it does come with lived experience that each time you face these things and ifyou put an offer out and it doesn't...
do well.
I think in the beginning that is a hard thing to overcome but once you've done it 10 timesand realise that not everything's going to land as you maybe thought it would and you
(28:43):
learn from it and move on, it's very different emotions that you'll feel the first time tothe 10th time.
So it's about knowing that and working through those emotions isn't it?
Yeah, no it is.
It's, as I say, all of it comes down to that, to your sense of self and self-belief.
And I tend to talk about trust quite a lot because I think it is, it's that trust inyourself that you will be okay no matter what happens.
(29:13):
And if you can have that sense of certainty, which, you know, it's kind of what I wassaying to you about the experiences that you've been through, that you are 100 %
undefeated.
So,
you you can take all that proof with you into something and it's like, okay, so you putout an offer and nobody wants it.
(29:33):
What's the worst case with that?
You know, okay, it's not the right thing for that moment.
You can try something else.
Or what is it about it that's not quite right?
Is it your approach?
Is it, you know, a lot of times, I was talking to a woman the other day about her
social media and it's she was so you know she was like I'm doing it all right I'm doingeverything that I was told on this marketing course and I'm doing this and I'm doing that
(30:02):
and it's like yeah but look at it from somebody else's point of view not you looking at itlook at it from a stranger or a potential client it's all business it's all I do this I do
that I offer this I offer that I do this there's no there's no her in it there's nothere's no there's no
(30:23):
interaction, there's no genuine getting to know that person.
equally with the business posts, there's nothing about the clients.
It's all what she does and what she offers, what's in know, any potential client islooking, going, what's in it for me?
What can you do for me?
(30:44):
How can you make me feel better?
And that's missing.
And the whole point of social media
is get social, let people see who you are.
It's like with Facebook having the professional page though that you can promote businessbut you can also show yourself.
It's so powerful because people can go, I like them or, they're quite interesting or,they've got a dog, I've got a dog, I'm excited.
(31:13):
I've wanted to try that wine, that's not, I wonder what it's like.
And you can start.
labels, are you?
Yeah, always, always, always, you know, and it is, all those kind of things, but it's,it's, they know, they feel like they know you, and then they're more interested to maybe
get in contact or respond to something.
(31:36):
But it's, yeah, you know, if...
needed than ever now because there are so many scams and people have been burnt so manytimes that it's even more important for them to really feel like they have a relationship
with you and they know you already.
And I think in so many industries, it's a real personal choice whether they think they'regoing to get on with you, especially in our industries when it is coping on things.
(32:01):
Am I actually even going to get on with you and...
feel like it's going to work and you need to be showing your personality for them to beable to make that informed decision.
yeah, I think it's really important and people in certain industries, especially peoplefeel like they have to be a very, you know, certain persona, they need to be professional,
(32:24):
they need to wear the suits and ties.
And actually, that's, that's just not how it is in today's age.
You know, you can be whoever you want to be.
yeah, it's about, again, it's the mindset, it's the approach.
People, we want to be helped, we don't wanna be lectured, whatever it is, even if it'sdoctors, if it's lawyers, it's, even the big heavy stuff, I don't want someone in a suit
(32:53):
to sit there and lecture me, I want them to help me with the problem that I've come tothem with.
And it's that shift.
And as I say, it's showing the person.
It's like, if you don't like me, that's fine.
I'm okay with that.
If you don't want fierce self-confidence and a slightly warped sense of humor, again, I'mnot the right person for you.
(33:15):
If you don't want to be called out, if you're pussyfooting around and not doing what yousaid you were gonna do, again, don't come to me.
That's fine.
I'm okay with that because I'm there for the people that do.
Yeah.
You know, one of the things that I've been told I need to get put on t-shirts for some ofmy clients is I'm not a good girl and that's okay.
Because, again, so much of the stuff that comes up is like from when they were littlebeing told, no, good girls don't do that.
(33:41):
Good girls don't behave like that.
Good girls don't answer that.
Good girls don't do that.
But it is, it's being okay with not being everybody's first choice.
But for the people that are right for you,
if you show yourself they will come to you because they can see who you are and they'llapproach and again don't even get hung up about likes and comments and stuff because a lot
(34:08):
of people don't always comment they don't always like but they follow and they what
I call them lurkers.
they don't, they have never, and so many of my clients have come to me this way.
They've never engaged in anything that I've put out.
And then they just pop into my DMs one day or send me an email.
I've been following you for X amount of time.
(34:29):
And I would really love to have a conversation.
And in the beginning, again, it can feel like, you know, I'm not getting, I've only had 10likes on this post.
must not be what people are wanting, but it's having that, the trust in yourself.
it does a lot come down to trust for sure.
no it is, it's that, that again is another big thing with that, that people go, no,nobody, nobody's commenting, so I must be doing something wrong.
(34:56):
But again, I always say to people, well, how often do you read things in scroll paths, butyou don't necessarily like it or put a comment, you know, if it's late at night or it's
first thing in the morning or you're, you know, you're on the train and you hit yourstation or you're just bored, you don't comment on every single thing you read.
you're aware of it, so why should it be different for other people?
(35:17):
You know, put yourself, put yourself over there briefly as well, is another thing thatthat really helps.
Yeah, it does.
Now, time is going on, but I can't not speak.
No, no, no.
It's just an amazing conversation I could have all day.
(35:38):
But no, this is the thing.
This is the only issue I have with podcasts is I have to limit the conversation.
And honestly, so many times I could speak all day.
But one thing I really want to
speak about with you because you mentioned it a lot when you were telling us your journeyis about being a people pleaser and how that didn't serve you well.
And realistically, it never serves anybody well.
(36:01):
But it's such a common trait.
I think especially so I'm a huge empath.
And for me, I really struggled with not always being able to give everybody what theyneeded.
So how did you overcome that?
And how did you start to realize that actually that wasn't a trait that was serving you?
I think, obviously, ending up in prison was a big hint that maybe this wasn't the best wayto be.
(36:28):
But, no, but in all seriousness, it was, in as much as it gave me time to start thinkingabout it.
And it's like, a lot of the time, people don't even realise that they're people pleasing.
because they think that they're being these giving people and that they're being very, youknow, there's this sense of humility and being humble because I'm just giving of my, you
(36:56):
know, I'm giving of my time and I'm giving them my energy and I'm doing all this for otherpeople and I'm putting myself last and doesn't that make me a good person?
It's like, no, it makes you Victorian.
It's just, you know, but it is, and they think that this is, you know, this is, it'scoming from a place of being good and being
(37:16):
and being generous and it's actually coming from quite a selfish place because you'regetting the satisfaction of doing all this and it's not a healthy thing.
It comes down to the six human needs that Tony Robbins used to talk about when I did mytraining with him, we did quite a lot of work on it.
(37:38):
But it's this need that everybody has.
You have these six human needs of certainty, uncertainty, significance.
growth, love and connection and contribution.
And you will meet them however you can.
And you can meet them in a good, healthy, beneficial way, or you can meet them in a toxic,really negative way.
(38:01):
Either way it will happen.
And I just felt, as I say, ending up in prison, go, hang on, this is ridiculous.
What have I done to get here?
And I realized that it was trying to be liked, trying to fit in.
trying to be part of a group that actually I didn't really, when I sat back and thoughtabout it, didn't want to be involved with because I didn't really like them anyway.
(38:24):
And it was about shifting that view from, want to help people, I don't want to pleasepeople.
And there's a big difference.
it gets slipped, it slips through because it's, people pleasing is a sneaky,
(38:44):
kind of trait because you don't realize that you do it until you're so far into it thatit's really hard to get out of.
You become this person that just always says yes, always does it.
It becomes resentful and quite often bitter to a certain degree, even though you're doingall this stuff and you keep doing more of it to try and make yourself feel better.
(39:07):
And all it does is breed more resentment, more stress, more anxiety, more pressure.
until you explode and then all the people that you've been pleasing look at you and go,well, what's wrong with you then?
Because you dare to say no or you blow up.
So yeah, I just, did a lot of work on why do I do that?
(39:30):
How does that happen?
And it was that awful thing of spending time actually saying no.
which was really, really hard.
And again, it's one of those things that people struggle with saying no.
And that's where I started saying no is a complete sentence.
And you have to just say no.
(39:52):
you know, can you do it?
No.
Because the second you open up with I wish I could but, or I haven't got time, or it opensup that space for negotiation and they can go, oh, well, if you haven't got time now,
could you do it tomorrow?
Or.
you know, well, if you want to, I'm sure we can make it work.
When can you do it?
But it opens up negotiation, whereas no, flat no.
(40:16):
Yeah.
And it was uncomfortable in the beginning.
Those very first few, I remember, because I was exactly the same as you when I wasyounger.
For me, it was definitely trying to fill my own bucket, I suppose, and trying to makemyself feel better by making other people and I was so desperate for people to like me
(40:38):
when I was younger.
So for me, if I could do it, if anyone asked me to do anything, I would say yes, I'dfigure it out.
in the hope that they would then like me and that would give me something.
So when I figured all of this out, I was probably maybe early 20s, I think, when I reallystarted pushing back.
And it's exactly what you said, well, my God, what's wrong with you?
(41:00):
And like the shock look on your face, like who is this person that's suddenly saying no?
And then for me, I think I would say this about absolutely everything in life.
It's a balance and you want a pendulum.
And I was so far in the always say yes phase.
And I was so far into the no phase.
(41:21):
And I was like, I opened this box and suddenly I was saying no to just absolutelyeverything, trying to determine my authority, I suppose, and that I wasn't able to say no.
And then finally, I managed to settle nicely in the middle and, you know, I yes to theopportunities and the things that I want to genuinely help with.
But I'm comfortable enough to say no when I see it's not serving me, was only going to beserving them.
(41:46):
So it's a journey for sure.
yeah, it's, it's a process, but it is, and it does, it feels awful, but it's, you know,it's like, it's like the flow of energy.
You have to do that.
You know, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of like giving up alcohol or giving up smoking orgiving, you know, any addiction, you have to have that moment of complete cold turkey, you
(42:09):
know, and if you do say no to everything and then you kind of...
Like you say, you start to open up a little bit and go, actually, okay, now I'll say yesto that.
Because it's not, you know, not everybody's not expecting me to do everything orexpecting.
yes with no ulterior motive apart from just to help them.
So I'm not saying yes anymore because I'm desperate for you to like me or, you know, anyof that negative emotion attached to it's purely just because I would like to help you.
(42:38):
But again, it was a journey and I think it's something that we have to continuously workon, isn't it?
All of these, these traits in ourselves, it's an ever ongoing journey.
and especially if you if you are starting out in business, if you're, you know, if you'renew, and you're just starting the the kind of fear of saying no, you know, it's like if
(43:01):
somebody says, well, you know, particularly if you're doing you're doing coaching orholistic healing or anything like that.
And somebody says, well, can you see me at nine o'clock tonight?
That the kind of fear of going well, actually, no, is really great, you know, you end up
saying that you'll work weekends, you'll work any time day or night just because, god,because what if they say no, I might have lost a client and, and, and so actually working
(43:27):
on those boundaries again is, is something that, is really important.
It's that thing of going, okay, make yourself less available to make yourself morevaluable.
And it's a really tough thing to learn.
But again, it's really useful and if you can start from there, it only strengthens yourbusiness as you go forward.
(43:52):
Yeah, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got when I first started business was don'tsay yes to every client that wants to work with you.
And I remember them telling me that and me thinking, well, why would you ever turn moneyaway?
and they explained the reasons and, I listened, I did take it on board and I listened andthere was only a couple of times in those early years that I went against my better
(44:16):
judgment and agreed to work with people.
And they were the biggest headaches.
they, you know, paid you the least money because they're always the tightest.
it's, again, it's a, it's a lesson you've got to learn that actually, you do need to trustyour judgment and your gut and don't just say yes to everyone for the money, because the
money will come anyway, you might just have to wait for the next client.
(44:41):
yeah, yeah, no, again, it's a lesson to learn and the earlier you can learn it, the lessgrief you go through.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ian, thank you so much for joining me.
Honestly, I've loved our conversation and genuinely feel like I could speak to you allday.
thank you.
It's been lovely.
If people are wanting to learn more about you or see how they can work with you, where arethe best channels for them to come and find you on?
(45:07):
either the website, which is IanNortonCoaching.com or to be honest, the best thing is tojust find me as Ian Norton on Facebook because that, as I say, that, is everything about
me.
There's, some of my story.
There's, there's me day to day.
So, you know what you'd be letting yourself in for.
Well, I'm going to get now go and find a wine bottle and zoom in on the label and see whatyou drink.
(45:33):
plenty of those.
But yeah, no, that is probably the easiest because that is, as you say, Facebook haseverything, all the website.
But yeah, no, it's been lovely.
Good.
Thank you so much.
I'll put the links in the show notes for everyone.
But thank you all to our listeners.
I hope you have enjoyed this lovely conversation with Ian, and I will see you all nextweek.
(45:55):
Take care.
everybody.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!