The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 56 - The Only Way To Build Confidence: Jacqueline Gold

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. Jaqueline Gold has been the CEO of AnnSummers for over thirty years, and has had to overcome a lot of demons and obstacles in her life. But the attitude she’s employed to tackle these is nothing short of incredible. In this moment, Jacqueline discusses how shy she first was and she overcame that. She reiterated here that we aren’t born shy. It’s often our situational environments that create and shape who we are later on. No matter how shy or inverted we are, everyone has a fire inside them, an ambition and a burning desire to do what they believe is right. Jacqueline is a great believer that courage comes first, it forces you out of your comfort zone, and when you do this, confidence will come and great things will happen. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/e4eJGthNMpb Jacqueline - https://jacquelinegold.com https://www.instagram.com/jacquelinegoldcbe/ Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. What you've gone on to do in your career and life and the crusade you've led is not one that would, you know, one would think would be led by a shy person. The person that I've met today doesn't seem to be a shy person necessarily to me. Seems to be one of conviction and confidence and belief. In hindsight, how did you go from being that shy person that was kind of coddled at an early age

by a mother that was risk adverse, drew a circle around you in the sand, didn't let you off the front garden to being the person you are today. What is it that does that to somebody? Well, I think there's a few things around this because I don't think this is exclusive to me. I think a lot of women especially experience this. I think, well, first of all, I might be wrong, but I don't think we're born shy. I know, I had that ambition and that burning desire. And when you have that passion, you have to release it. You can't keep it inside just because you're shy. And I think there were many things that I did. You know, I remember in my very early twenties holding a conference, my first conference for my army of, of, um, sales ambassadors, which I had about 500 in my first year. Fran Summers.

Fran Summers. Yes. And I held this conference at the, um, Grand Hotel in Brighton. And I thought it was a great idea when I planned it because the whole idea is to engage with your teams and tell them about what you're doing and what your mission is and get everybody involved and on the journey. And it was sort of, you know, a few hours before I was going on stage, I was thinking, oh my God, what am I doing? Because this was like horror to me. I had no experience and I was, you know, absolutely terrified. But if you're talking about something that you are passionate about, I think it changes it. It's not the same as doing a best man speech or, you know, getting up at school and doing your first speech. When

you're talking about something that you really care about and that you live and breathe, once you get out there and you've got that first sentence out the way, I do think it changes you. Yeah. And, you know, that's what it did for me. So I am a great believer that courage comes first and I've always had a lot of courage. And I think if you have the courage, eventually the confidence will come. Yeah. So yeah, from what you've said there,

it's like the courage is creating, it's forcing you to create evidence for yourself. Yeah. It's forcing you to create evidence for yourself. Yeah. It's forcing you to step outside your comfort zone. And then we all know, anyone that's successful knows that when you do, great things happen. Yeah. And your comfort zone then expands, becomes a bit bigger, and then you step another zone. Exactly.