[0:40] Bob Gentle: I'm thrilled to be back. If this is my favorite place to be, I've got nothing else going on.
[0:45] Ian: I'll give you the money later. For people who haven't, uh, who didn't listen to the last episode, and you need to listen to the last episode when Bob is my guest just a brief introduction about you and your content creation journey, we're going to get into the, the areas of content creation, confidence and mindset and all those kinds of things, but just a brief introduction.
[1:05] Bob Gentle: So my business now is completely different from my business pre content creation journey, and it's relatively short. I think I really only, it began with my podcast probably around five years ago, years ago, I was running what was essentially a very local. Digital marketing, web design business. Fast forward five years, it's completely different now.
[1:26] So my business is exclusively supporting people with the strategy, coaching, and tech and tactics around building marketing and monetizing expertise or with people like coaches, consultants, and speakers and authors, and. The content creation journey for me, like I said, it began with the podcast. It was largely a guest based podcast and interviewing the people that I admired.
[1:49] And for me, it's been a lot like a PhD program in being a content creator, building a personal brand and all the processes and things that are required for a, to make that happen and B for that to turn into value for whoever's doing it. So yeah. It's been a very technical journey, but it's also been, personally, I think, I hate to use the very cheesy sort of transformation analogy, but I'm not the person now I was at the beginning of this journey.
[2:19] We can probably speak about that a little bit as we go through.
[2:22] Ian: It's been amazing to see your progression because we've known, I'm trying to think how long we've known each other for, but I think I was on your podcast towards the beginning and I. And now I just I see you and then I mean this in a positive way.
[2:35] I see you everywhere. You're really visible and we maybe talk about that because I know for me that's always been quite a difficult thing. Particularly as an introvert. I don't find visibility always the easiest thing. Let's go back though to the beginning of your content creation or your business really.
[2:54] And you Can you remember the time when you, we, maybe, did you struggle with confidence in front of the camera and how did you get better at that because clearly you're a lot more confident now because you're coming on the show and you're doing it and I see you everywhere showing your face on video.
[3:11] Bob Gentle: I'm really glad you're seeing my face everywhere. That makes my day. I think at the beginning of this journey, live video, forget it. Video in general. No chance. I struggled with having my voice out there on a podcast that nobody was even going to listen to. It was really hard. I am not a natural showman by any means.
[3:32] And it's been a real process of becoming comfortable with that. And I remember, so I think you were possibly guest number one or two on my podcast. So you've been with me pretty much from the beginning of the journey because that was the beginning, but I remember being at a conference and I'm pretty sure you were there as well.
[3:48] And I was sitting at a table and I was talking about how in order for my business to grow and change and in order for me to spend my time doing the operating in my zone of genius, I needed. Broader reach, because here's the thing. If you're accustomed to doing business in a local community, your ability to operate with that little slice of what you do that's most valuable and that you most enjoy doing, it's almost impossible.
[4:12] If somebody says, will you walk my dog? The answer is probably going to be yes. So in order for you to really be able to lean into the people you want to serve most and the people who need what you have most, you need more audience. And I couldn't do it. So I remember sitting at a table expressing how difficult I was finding something as simple as a selfie, and I realized, hold on, nobody around the table knew about me.
[4:36] I'd spent 15 years working in search and rescue. I was very comfortable doing really dangerous things. terrifying things. Quite happy abseiling down a cliff in the middle of the night or jumping into the sea or recovering bodies from awkward situations. And yet I was scared of a selfie. So I thought how do we train people to do scary things?
[4:56] And It's works like this. We gradually desensitize them to those situations so that what's terrifying for most people gradually becomes normal for you. And so I simply applied that same process to content creation. And so now the things that I'm doing with content, they don't really make me, I don't have that reaction to them anymore.
[5:17] There's a few other mindset tricks that I guess. that I use both for myself every time I'm doing something I'm uncomfortable with in terms of content. And I also use with clients, but we'll maybe come to that later on.
[5:30] Ian: Yeah that's so fascinating and I'm trying to remember whether I did know that about you about the search and rescue thing, but it's amazing that you, Use that to help what you're doing now. And I think sometimes we can do that. We can, we have other experiences on our lives and we can use those experiences.
[5:48] With something like getting in front of the camera and you're not alone. I remember the first time I went in front of the camera, I was absolutely petrified. I was so nervous. I was almost crying. Seriously. And I've spoken to other people who are public speakers. They go around the world speaking at very prestigious events.
[6:06] But getting in front of the camera, going live, forget it. It's a very strange thing. What happens in our. in our brains. So you had those moments those moments of maybe fear or lacking of confidence and but you went through it. Now, was that all working on your own or did you get help from other people?
[6:24] How much were other people in your life, whether it was coaches or other people to encourage you along the way? How much of that was part of your journey
[6:35] Bob Gentle: There's a couple of ways of looking at this. For me, a key moment, was discussing this with my family. And at the time I had two teenage kids who I think a lot of people wouldn't have blamed if they had mocked me mercilessly for what I was doing. That my, my entire extended family is very quiet.
[6:52] I'm probably the closest. That you would call an extrovert, to be honest. I'm the wild one. And if you know me, this is quite hilarious. I remember speaking to my family and saying, in order for us to eat and in order for my business to grow, I need to be more visible. So I'm going to need to start doing some things online that you might find embarrassing.
[7:11] Are we all okay with this? And What was, what happened was really interesting. It went from them being people I was a bit worried about the reaction to them becoming a key components of it. So they would take the pictures that I could post on social media. They would be the people who are recommending content ideas or potential podcast guests.
[7:29] So they became active participants, which really helped me. Another side of this I think is we all see content creators as. When we're consumers, we see content creators as solo players, lone wolves. That's just not real. If you're going to be successful in this business, it's generally always going to be as part of a community and look for fellow travelers.
[7:49] For me, this was really important. The things that you and I do, Ian, for most people, they're not normal. So we need to get around people for whom this is normal behavior because it. It makes it much easier if we're no longer doing the weird things, but we're simply doing what our peers and our friends see as normal.
[8:07] So for me now, probably my entire friendship circle is online content creators. So for the kind of stuff I'm doing now, this is just what we do. And that's really helped.
[8:18] Ian: Is so true. And I think the other thing I find, I don't know if you found this is that the only slight problem with that. I think that is absolutely the right thing to do. But we can potentially sometimes go into comparing ourselves with others. And if we are more introverted and or, and I want to make a distinction between introversion and being shy.
[8:39] There are two distinct things here. But if you are comparing yourself with somebody who is very full of energy in front of the camera. And you're not you can sometimes be tempted to think I could never be like that. I may as well give up. And I think that's I hate to admit this, but that has been an issue for me in the past.
[8:57] And I think actually, for those of us who maybe are slightly more gentle in front of the camera. Then we, I think it's good to just to be in touch with those kinds of people as well. So like me and you, for example, um, I think that's a really important thing too, because otherwise we end up just assuming that we need to be somebody different to who we actually are, which is not a good thing.
[9:19] Bob Gentle: You're absolutely right. I think finding your own style is quite difficult. I think you need to listen to the people who are reflecting back to you what they like about your content and with discernment, lean into it. So I'm never going to be a Gary Vaynerchuk. And in the beginning I thought I need to find ways to present as high energy and it just didn't work.
[9:42] It was like a pair of bowling shoes. It just felt gross. I didn't like it. But people kept telling me they really liked the voice. And honestly, I went 45 years before anybody had ever mentioned my voice as an asset. And then suddenly I start the podcast and everybody's talking about the voice and I think, okay, I need to lean into that.
[9:58] And then I realized. I'm not high energy, I'm really low energy. And people kept saying they find me relaxing to listen to. So I start putting low five music over all my YouTube videos. Suddenly it works. So your own vibe, find your own character. And essentially that becomes your brand. There's
[10:15] Ian: that's really interesting about the music because I have, I've seen podcasts or heard, you don't see podcasts, you hear podcasts, but unless it's a video one, but where they've had this like really high energy, like almost a movie trailer intro and then they come in and it's hello, welcome to my podcast. No, like you need to, if you do, if your vibe is more low energy and relaxed, then choose music that's going to Compliment that you don't have to copy everyone there. I want to move on to, we've touched on this, but what we've have been talking about it, but I want to go into this further.
[10:50] If the, if you're listening to this and you're shy. Or introverted or maybe you're the opposite. Maybe you're extroverted or you're more, what's the opposite of shy, maybe bold. Maybe you think how does that affect, how does this affect me? So Bob how does your personality, I don't know if you want to give us a little bit more insight into how you would describe yourself.
[11:11] How does that affect the way you turn up on camera? Just briefly on me, for example, like live video, I absolutely see live video is really important. It's been a massive part of what I do, but I'll be honest, I find if I do too much live streaming every week, it exhausts me. So that's one reason why I'm doing these pre recorded now, and I'm going to be doing I am still going to be doing live, but I need to balance that for my own energy.
[11:37] So I'd be interested to know, like, how does your personality how do you, how does your personality affect the way you turn up and create content?
[11:43] Bob Gentle: how to answer this question. I think there's an important aspect to this, which is self acceptance. If you can accept how you are and enjoy who you are, then it will make your content creation process much simpler. And you mentioned comparison, and I think a lot of people worry about how people are going to react to us.
[12:01] So there's quite a lot of psychological barbed wire fences. in the content creation landscape. So a couple of things that I've found really help are bearing in mind that no matter who you are, one third of people are not going to like you. One third of people are not going to care. They are going to ignore you, but one third of people are going to love you.
[12:20] And when you understand that your job is just to be there for them, not the other two thirds, you can relax into it. Another aspect of this is a lot of people worry about how they're going to come across or they'll talk about imposter syndrome, or they'll talk about being self conscious, or they'll talk about, yeah, all kinds of other things.
[12:38] But at the end of the day, it all comes down to fear. So I would say have a fear audit. What specifically, get right down to the detail, is it that you're scared of? Because once you've understood this, you can show up. in more freedom. How I show up, I no longer really worry about what people think about me, because I've had enough positive reactions from people to know that there are people out there who are going to react positively to me, and I'm for them, and I'm not for anybody else. I'm not, if we take Andrew Tate, for example, he's a very polarizing character.
[13:11] Similarly, Donald Trump, a very polarizing character. I expect I am a polarizing character in that I am low energy and I'm very thoughtful and considered and I sometimes have to stop and think about things when I'm on camera. That's okay. I've become okay with that. Um, I don't think that really answers your question.
[13:31] Ian: No it does. I know you've got me thinking a lot. I, there's so many different things there that I would love to dig a bit further into and probably going to just have to get you back onto the show, but like you want, I love what you said about of having a. Doing a fear audit digging deep into what is stopping me here?
[13:48] What actually is it?
[13:50] Bob Gentle: a thing of Fear shrinks in the light. What I came to, one of the big barriers for me, when I really sat and understood it, I worked out, you know what, it's vanity. That's pure and simple. That's the real barrier for me is I'm just being really vain. I'm worried about not being 19 anymore.
[14:04] I'm worried about having bad teeth. I'm worried about my hair doesn't look as fancy as it used to. And once you understand it's just vanity, it's much easier to show up for other people because it's not about me.
[14:15] Ian: that, that's quite a big admission for people to make but we need to be prepared to some of these things. Doing a fear audit is not going to be a comfortable thing. I would suggest, and then the other thing that you said was, what was it you were saying about just in a sense, like if you're not being, this isn't what you said, but tell me if you agree with this, if you're not being polarizing, you're probably not really being yourself, would you say?
[14:41] Bob Gentle: It is. I think people talk about attraction. People want to attract customers or they want to attract whatever it is they want to attract into their world through content. We're creating content because we want. to attract certain things, attention. But here's the thing. If you look at attraction, it's a, it's the force of magnetism and magnetism has two polarities, a positive and a negative.
[15:01] And in order for you to have this strong force of attraction, we have to have the equal and opposite. You can't have a strong force of attraction without pushing other people away. And this is why we see people like, I don't even want to say his name again, either of their names, but they have this strong force of attraction to those people who therefore, because of this polarization, they push others like you and I away with some significance.
[15:25] So I'm probably, I know that the people who are repelled by me are the people who want everything to be really quick. They want really high energy. They can't cope with somebody who sits in their quiet for a minute. Whereas there are others who want. Me.
[15:40] Ian: Yeah. Now that's really interesting. So we talked a lot about confidence and that journey and that mindset journey, but let's talk a little bit about communication just maybe 30 seconds on this.
[15:50] How would you encourage listeners? Yeah. To improve their communication skills, because we've all got we've all got this story to tell. We've all got expertise when you get in front of the camera in front of the microphone. Sometimes something weird can happen to our brains and we. Struggled to get those words out.
[16:07] Any advice on that?
[16:08] Bob Gentle: here's the thing. If you want to get good at anything, you have to give yourself permission to suck at it first. Sucking is the price of being good and it doesn't really matter what you do. If you want to learn to play tennis, you're going to have to be awful at it first. So don't approach content creation as I need to rock up and be awesome. rock up and say, I wanted to be slightly better than I was last time. But I'll tell you a story. I was running a mastermind session in person back in the day. And we were going around the room and we're talking about video content. And there was an accountant in the room and the accountant sat up and said, Oh, there's this other accountant.
[16:43] He makes these videos. They're terrible. And this was, it was all a local group. And I said, stop. I knew who exactly who she was talking about. And around the room, I said, okay, around the room. Does anybody know who she's talking about? And they all nodded their head. I said, has anybody ever met this guy? No, nobody had ever met him.
[17:00] In the room, other than your own accountant and this one here, how many other accountants do you know? None. So who's winning here? This guy making these garbage videos, because they weren't great, but they were working. So the question here is comparison. Don't compare yourself to Bob Gentle or Ian Anderson Gray.
[17:18] Because trust me, we're comparing ourselves with other people. Compare yourself to you yesterday, and you will win. Just get a little bit better every time. That's how I would approach it.
[17:27] Ian: That's amazing advice. I thoroughly agree with you Perhaps more difficult to implement But we're on a journey and you've just got to do that and any final words of encouragement because there's a lot of things there that we need to do, but they're quite difficult So if we know That we need to do these things that we need to put in this hard work And we're feeling a little bit nervous about this But you know the if you're listening to this watching this and you agree with Bob Which you should do because it's great advice, but you're thinking, Oh, it's hard work.
[18:00] This is difficult. Bob, like how would you encourage people to make a start on this?
[18:05] Bob Gentle: One thing that really helped me was Todd Harmon's book, The Alter Ego Effect. And I didn't go, all in on the whole process that he outlined. But what he did help me understand was that there's an online show business version of Bob and then there's Bob, and they don't have to be the same. Obviously mine are very aligned, but what I would encourage people to think is it's not about you, that the content you create, it goes out into the world and it does its job.
[18:31] Once you hit publish, forget about it. At the end of the day, this is show business. Actors don't sit there at home. worrying about how their content is being received. Obviously they probably do because it's their job. They know that there's an onstage persona and there's an offstage persona. What they, the, what people think about them does not define them.
[18:51] This is about content creation. This is not about personal judgment. So just get on and do it. Get it done. And give yourself permission to be repetitive. And trust me, it's incredibly surprising how quickly this can impact your business and your life. It just takes one person to see one piece of content and it could change the game for you.
[19:13] Ian: So true. It really, it's changed my life. I know it's changed your life, Bob. It's very liberating and you get to meet some amazing people. You get. These amazing opportunities, but you've got to, you do have to make some changes. And if you're struggling with that, then you're not alone.
[19:30] There are people that can help as well. If you're struggling, then Bob reach out to Bob. This is the kind of part of the work that you do working with the people on mindset as well as other areas. So let's talk about that. Just before we finish, so how can people find out more about you?
[19:44] What is the kind of work that you do with your clients and how can people get in touch with you?
[19:48] Bob Gentle: So you'll find me on every social media platform, just at Bob gentle. I'm very easy to find. I have a podcast, the personal brand business show. Again, you could just search Bob gentle in any podcast player. I'm very easy to find. The work that I do with clients, it tends to focus around mission, mindset, marketing, and monetization of.
[20:08] Personal brands. So it tends to be people like authors, consultants, coaches, speakers, people in the expert space, and I'm helping them build the personal brand, market that personal brand and monetize that personal brand. And that's typically part as strategic advisor, part as coach and part offering tech support because sometimes it's just complicated.
[20:30] Ian: It is. It can be very complicated. Thanks, Bob. It's been great to have you back on the show. We'll have to have you back to dig a little bit deeper into some of these things. It's been really fun getting a little bit deeper into some of these, I don't know, mindsets, struggles that let's face it, most of us face along the way.
[20:48] So appreciate it. Thanks, Bob.
[20:50] Bob Gentle: Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed it. And honestly, anybody listening to head is really where the game is. Your business will grow when you grow.
[20:57] Ian: Couldn't have said it any better. I saw. Thanks, Bob. We are out of time. Thank you so much for plugging us into your ears or watching us on the YouTubes. It's been a fascinating episode today. I hope you agree. Until next time, I encourage you to level up your impact, authority and profits to the power of confident live video.
[21:17] See you soon. Bye.
