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May 29, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:19:01
Steve Witchett - a taster
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I love DeliPod, come and subscribe to the podcast baby, I love DeliPod, unless another time subscribe with me, I love DeliPod, welcome to the DeliPod with me Dave DeliPod. welcome to the DeliPod with me Dave DeliPod.
You're not meant to laugh.
My guests don't normally laugh at that point, you know.
I do make you laugh.
Just wait.
Wait till you're...
Wait till your queue.
And I have been talking to lots of special guests recently about the lockdown and coronavirus and stuff and people have been saying to me, why don't you have somebody different?
And I think my guest today is different.
His name is Steve Wichit.
And Steve, I don't know how to describe you.
You're a bit like my loony doctor.
I remember vaguely that we met You were introduced to me by Paul McKenna.
Is that right?
Indeed.
Indeed.
Very, very graciously introduced, yeah.
And Paul McKenna, tell me if I'm wrong here.
He's a really nice guy, isn't he?
Yeah, Paul's a super guy.
Really, really nice bloke.
He's one of my role models for not only how to be good at doing this kind of work, but for how to retain being a regular individual when you're rich and famous.
That's an interesting point you make there.
That is absolutely key, isn't it?
That we see lots of people Being completely ruined by celebrity.
They get airs and graces.
They've got no time.
They forget who they were before they were famous.
And he seems to me, you look at his career, and he's probably blushing now somewhere, you know, whatever.
I mean, I don't know how much he's made from those various self-help books, but it must be gazillions.
And yet, I've met lots of famous, successful people in my time, and some of them have been ruined by it.
And he's one of the people that hasn't.
I think he's really nice and helpful, and I'll get him on the podcast one day.
I mean, not that I'm saying that you're a piss-poor substitute for Paul McKenna.
You understand.
Because I love you very much.
Absolutely.
Have I mentioned your name yet?
Steve Wichett.
Actually, Steve, how do you describe yourself on your calling card?
Well, it actually depends.
The founder of NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Richard Bandler, has simplified his card over the years.
Now he's just got the word wizard on his card.
I quite like the idea of just one day growing my hair very long, having a long grey beard, a big staff with a crystal on the top, I like Gandalf the Grey.
Yeah.
People come and send me in and I say, come in, sit down for a spell.
Now, what was the problem?
Yes.
You'd like to be that.
Yeah.
On my business card, I describe myself as an NLP master practitioner because NLP, Richard Bandler said I made up the term neuro-linguistic programming so you guys can do whatever you want.
So a percentage of my clients think I'm a psychotherapist, a percentage think I'm a business mentor, a percentage think I'm a life coach.
It might be that they're coming to me for hypnotherapy or I help mentor and develop colleagues.
So I think I'm sort of a bit chameleon-like in what I do.
It depends on what people want, what they need.
I thought you'd be interesting to talk to, apart from the fact that I haven't spoken to you for about god knows how long.
How long is it?
It's got to be two years, three years.
But I thought particularly what we know about We're not going to talk about the news very much, but one thing we know is that a lot of people have been suffering mental health problems as a result of being cooped up in their homes.
And I'm sort of thinking, well, there are going to be some listeners here who are going to be thinking, well, you know, What do I give?
I'm fine mentally.
And for those listeners, I'd say, well, okay, well, you might find Steve interesting.
You're right.
You might not.
I think you are interesting.
But there are going to be people out there who, people like me, who are prone to depression, anxiety, and all sorts of weird mental stuff.
And I think you probably can give them a few tips like you gave me in our various sessions.
Before we go into those, what I wanted to talk to you about was...
Stop laughing!
Stop!
You laugh far too much!
Yeah, you're very small, James.
I know, that's the thing.
I don't know whether this is part of your patter, Steve, but you are very good at making me feel, like, happy to be me.
And I don't want to say that in a kind of wanky, kind of therapy-speak way, but one of the things that you said about me, and I think this has been, this is actually key to, whenever I've been successful, I have observed this most.
That the most important thing, I don't know whether in everyone's life, but certainly in my life, is that quality you call congruence.
Being congruent.
Tell me, just so explain what congruence is.
Yeah, I best illustrate it by telling a story about seeing an individual wearing clothes that don't suit them.
And we've all had that experience.
Somebody's wearing something that's just too old for them or too young for them or too trendy for them.
Like your t-shirt.
Yeah, thank you!
Can the viewers see me as well?
I hope so, yeah.
So carry on.
Fantastic.
I should apologise for all the books behind me.
When I talk to clients and other people on video, it's just the way my camera's lined up.
I like books.
I've put all my CDs on electronic, but I can't quite bring myself to do that for my books.
They furnish a room.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm not showing off particularly.
No, no.
So you see people who are incongruent in the way they dress and they just don't look right for themselves.
And you see other people who look really, really together with themselves in their attitude, their manner, the things that they're wearing.
And you think there's somebody that's quite attractive because they're congruent with themselves.
A good example is Jade Goody.
Jade Goody, whatever people think of her, some like her, some don't, or liked her, didn't.
Jade Goody had a really likeable quality and it fascinated me.
I couldn't quite work out what it was I liked about her.
Until I recognised she was congruent with herself.
She was being absolutely authentic.
Just like our mutual friend Paul McKenna.
He's completely congruent.
What you see is what you get.
Yeah.
Is congruent, do you think, another word for authenticity?
I mean, for example, is Donald Trump congruent?
Yeah, completely.
And he's likeable because what he says is like a child.
It's immediate and in the moment.
It's very unfiltered, it seems.
So I think that congruence and charisma have got a lot going for them in common, if that makes sense.
And do you think people can be trained to become more congruent?
I think so.
I think so.
I teach people a trick of checking in with their coherence check, their internal filter, an NLP technique to see whether we actually believe ourselves, whether we esteem ourselves, whether we're confident in ourselves.
And it's very simple to do.
I can show you how to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
I know you're extremely well-read and highly educated and all that.
Think of a word, visualize in front of you a word that you can check the spelling of.
You got one?
Yes.
Can you see a word, any word?
The word giraffe or pineapple?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a word in front of me.
Now, have a look at that word, and how do you know it's spelled correctly?
I just know.
I mean, I'm reasonably good at spelling.
Absolutely.
So you can look at it and you can visually see it's good and you also most likely, most people do, will get a thing called a congruence check.
Somewhere down the midline of your body from the center of your throat down to your navel or lower area of your torso, you'll get a little That's it, a kind of yup feeling.
So just pay attention to that feeling and look at the word.
Do you get that?
Do you get a sensation somewhere?
Well now you mention it, yeah, I'm sort of getting it kind of, yeah, like you said.
Yeah, where is it for you please?
It's different for everybody.
Where do you think?
Oh, in my, in my sort of, around my belly button.
Super, super.
The navel chakra area.
I'm sorry for the chakra mention.
I'm not that weird.
No, we did that in Tai Chi as well.
In Tai Chi it's called the lower Danchen.
Exactly.
So what happens when you get a sensation there?
Most often we don't notice there, but that's a congruence check.
You look at the thing, it looks right, some people say yep to themselves or uh-huh, or some people just remain silent because it doesn't need any comment, and they get a physical feeling.
And that's a nice indicator, that congruence check.
So I say to people, when you think about yourself riding a penny-farthing bicycle on Oxford Street, how congruent does that feel?
Not that I've ever seen you do that, James.
No, I imagine it would be quite rough.
I mean, do they even have tyres on them?
I don't think they do, do they?
They don't have pneumatic tyres.
They used to be back in the days when I rode one in the 18th century.
It was invented in the 19th century, surely.
I think you're probably correct, as you are on most things, but...
When you think about that experience, whether you see it or experience actually doing that, you notice that you don't get a congruence check.
There's no feeling of, yup, it's okay.
Yes.
When you think about your idea, when you think, I am James Denningpole, and you say that to yourself, you probably get the congruence check there.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, excellent.
I definitely am James Denningpole.
Yeah.
In medieval days, they used to call this kind of thing a touchstone.
So I give clients a touchstone.
Sometimes I do it in different ways.
I get them to notice whether they're leaning forwards or backwards when they make a statement or think a thought.
And so when people have got an increasing awareness of how congruent they're being, they can actually start to think, wow, is this right for me?
Should I be doing this?
Was I right to have made that decision?
And they get their congruent signals.
Does that make sense?
Totally.
I'm just wondering here then, I mean, I remember, it's a story I may have told before on my podcast, I'm not sure, but when, in my last term at university, We had this dinner with our tutors after it was all over.
We'd done the exams and stuff.
We were all kind of, we all had our hair down.
We were relaxing with our tutors who'd previously been these kind of unapproachable teacher types.
And we were talking about what we were going to do.
And my favourite tutor, a guy called Peter Conrad, said to me, he said, James, I just think you should just go out into the world and just be, you should just go out and be James Dellingpole.
Obviously, he didn't say that to all his undergraduates, because that would have made him a twat.
I mean, he tailored that advice to me.
He just thought that I was kind of...
The others would be Paul's substitutes.
He thought that, but I think he also thought that, I think probably what he saw in me, having read my essays and got to know me quite closely over the previous two years, Was that I was really unsuited to any kind of job that would involve me sucking arse, brown nosing, whatever.
I mean, I can sort of do it, but it's never been really my thing.
So in a way, training me to be congruent or encouraging my congruence has got to be great for me.
But what about...
So suppose a client comes to you.
And they've got a mortgage and a wife and a family to support.
And they're probably quite unhappy.
I mean, this probably applies to loads of people.
They're probably quite unhappy in their jobs because what they'd really like to be is a cattle rancher in Argentina or stuff.
Absolutely.
Is it responsible for you to kind of encourage them to fuck off and become a cattle rancher?
When it's not just them, but it's their family at stake and they may not even be a good cattle rancher.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Yeah, I like the question because I check for congruence as well as competence and confidence.
I'll explain what I mean by that if I may.
If somebody comes to see me and they say, I want you to make me completely confident that I can fly a light aircraft.
I want to check on the competence.
Otherwise that could go badly wrong.
If they say, I want you to be completely confident that I can win the men's finals at Wimbledon, I'll check on their level, their rankings, the possibility of that happening.
So I'm always looking to see whether they have a matching response there.
And it's easy to detect incongruence.
So if they say, well, I'm completely confident, I'm thinking, well, I'm not entirely sure you are.
And then I'll ask for examples, how would you demonstrate that to somebody who didn't know you and never met you and what experiences you had and so on?
And all the time, I'm looking for the congruence of the state that they're in.
And, you know, earlier I mentioned about when people are incongruent, they send out signals, almost like a tale that a poker player would see.
Right.
It's like when somebody's lying, that you can see the sort of shiftingness around their character.
And if this person came to me and said, I really want to be a rancher in California.
Argentina.
Excuse me?
Argentina, not California.
Argentina?
It's a wildly remandering, yeah.
Unless they're an expert in inflation and civil unrest, that's probably not the best place for them to go.
So I'll say, tell me about that.
And I look for how much their state changes.
If they come in like, I'm stuck in it and I'm depressed and it's horrible.
I hate my life and wake up every day, you know, another brick in the wall.
And I say, what would you like to do?
And they go, I'd like to be a rancher in Argentina.
There's some congruence probably going on there.
If they say, I'd like to be a rancher in Argentina, then I become a bit worried about the congruence of that utterance.
Right.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Now, obviously, you can't talk about individual clients, but what do you find are the most common problems people come to you with?
Yeah, it goes in patches of different bits and pieces.
But generally, on the psychotherapy and counselling side, I do lots and lots of work with really, really stuck people.
People have been to see other counsellors or therapists and just haven't got the changes.
I guess I get referred and get known for.
I don't know if I like the challenge or if my skill set enables me to do that.
So they'll come in and they'll present their own variety of depression or anxiety or some phobia perhaps.
And on the other hand, I'll have people who are terrified of public speaking and they need to do it for their business or their promotion and the career advancement they're looking for.
So I might easily find myself going through a month or two of being a coach in that.
And I always ask myself, why is the universe sending me all these clients of this particular thing?
Clients about relationships or aversions or success or happiness?
And after a while I'll reflect, is this some secret message for me from the universe?
Should I be paying attention to all the inquiries I'm getting?
I'll sit and reflect with colleagues.
I do a reflective practice session, peer chats with senior colleagues and occasionally I'll go, do you know I've had a lot of people looking for this reason and I wonder is it anything to do with me?
And they'll cross-examine me and question me and look for my congruence in my response.
Yes.
Well, actually, did you ever go through, I mean, were you ever sort of, you're obviously well balanced now, you have to be to kind of deal with kind of psychos and freaks, and it sounds like you get the worst, which is why you were sent, presumably it's why McKenna sent me to you.
Sincerely hope so.
Yeah, I know.
Listen, I think it's cool that I was considered one of the intractable ones that other people couldn't cure.
But were you ever messed up yourself?
Or have you always been kind of genial?
Yeah, totally.
No, no, I share this with clients.
I grew up being innocent and happy and quite a happy loomer and whistling and singing and didn't really need other people.
I was quite self-absorbed, and I'm not sure if that counts me as a narcissist or just really enjoying my life in a innocent way.
I got a little bit bullied at school in my early teens, which I think was a common thing.
It wasn't that serious or that long, but being quite sensitive, that made me introvert for a little while.
And in my later teens, it's what set me off on this pathway of self-development and Understanding and so on.
In my mid-twenties, I was in an odd place, running a business in partnership with my wife and her parents, all living together, baby on the way, and I started getting pains in my chest.
And I'm like, oh, I've done all that.
I was healthy-minded and positive, and I'd come from the school of when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
So...
I went to see my doctor and said, I'm sorry to bother you.
I think it might be something wrong with my heart.
He asked me a few questions and I was having panicky feelings.
I had to run out of restaurants and cinemas and stuff and I didn't know why.
And he said, no, no, no.
He said, that's stress.
I said, stress?
What's that?
That's weakness, isn't it?
And he said, no, no.
And he explained a little bit.
And I said, well, okay, it's giving me anxiety, as I understand it.
What do I do?
And he gave me these little triangular blue pills.
And he said, take one a day for three weeks and then come back and see me.
I went back to see him after three weeks and he said, how do you feel?
I said, well, I've not been feeling anything, thank you.
It's been wonderful.
It's like having my head inside a bucket full of cotton woolen.
Thanks for the respite.
What do we do now?
And he said, no, that's it.
That's it.
I was a bit more outspoken, perhaps I'm more outspoken now, but less polished then.
And I said, you don't know what you're flipping doing.
And I set off on a journey of discovery to find out What was going on with stress and anxiety?
I tried depression for about a month, years later, but I was rubbish here.
I just couldn't do it.
Too much stimulation to be had in other directions.
I couldn't internalize properly.
And so after two or three years, I found some stuff that started to teach me about my condition and it's been a great joy to not have only found out how to do that, but I suppose to become something of an expert, and I'm cautious to use the word, in helping people understand their own particular version of anxiety, depression, phobias and whatever.
For me, that forms under the description of the wounded healer, which I often hear people offering.
A big client say to me, what's it like to be as magnificently wonderful as you are and always perfectly in balance?
I said, you want to talk to my family, talk to my other half or my kids, and you'll discover that I've got the full range of human emotions.
I just can't sustain the negative ones for very long.
That's very good.
Now, I wanted to ask you, before we go on, there are going to be some people here, and I think I would have been one of them in the past, who listen to stuff, concepts like those very letters, NLP, and they think, this is dark arts, this is very dodgy, don't like this stuff, what the hell is James doing talking to this weird...
You can do that.
You can drink your stuff.
But NLP has got a bad rap, hasn't it?
Not least, I think, because I get this on Twitter a lot.
People say to me, Politicians use NLP techniques a lot.
And you're using them a bit when you say, you're giving me happy signals to make me feel to control me in your evil way.
But you know what I'm saying?
It has got a reputation, hasn't it?
Definitely, definitely.
And I cheerfully acknowledge that because it's true.
It gained some great traction in the speed seduction community 10-15 years ago.
What's that delight?
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
So the guy who wrote the book The Game had a fair bit to say about how he learned NLP techniques to discombobulate attractive young ladies with low self-esteem so he could sleep with them.
And he did that really, really well.
So I liken it to electricity.
The electricity has got no morals or values or conscience and you can use it to light hospitals and nurseries or torch chambers, although that might be pleasing for some people.
So I say NLP is not a thing.
It's a way of doing things.
Right.
Can you give me...
Yeah, no, absolutely.
For me, NLP is all about modelling.
It's about looking for behaviours you want to replicate.
And if somebody has got a way as a politician of using their hands and their tonality a lot, then you might think that they've learned that from somebody else who was naturally congruent.
So people can appear congruent by their tonality and their gestures.
For me, it's sort of integrated because I've been doing it for so long.
But it's very close to being the best version of myself and putting things in the best way that anybody could.
Does that make sense?
Well, it does.
I mean, that's the sort of positive version of NLP. I suppose people are suspicious of it because they think that some kind of trick is being played, that it ain't natural.
Do you think?
Yeah, I think so.
And often I'll be doing work on relationships, which has been a major feature of my conversations during lockdown.
Oh, has it?
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, tell me.
Have lots of people working down.
Yeah, I may have said to you before that I typically always work one day between Christmas and New Year, not because I particularly want to, it's nice to have a bit of time off and change gears and refocus and so on, but I want to be available because you probably know this, the number of domestic murders increases rapidly over bank holiday weekends and Christmas and so on.
So whenever people are confined together unnaturally, they don't have the resources.
I mean, obviously I'm a special case, my other half, and she was furloughed right from the very beginning.
We're having a delightful time together.
We're respecting each other's space and things that we're doing.
She's done all the CPD she can do for her job and watched everything on, can I say Netflix and Amazon Prime?
It's a free podcast.
Oh, fantastic.
Thank you.
I'm just checking.
I'm not very experienced in what I should and shouldn't say.
You probably notice I'm moderating my language compared to the vulgarity and profanity I'd usually offer.
Oh, I don't know.
I've forgotten you swore, actually.
I try not to swear too much because I know that there are some...
Some people listen to the podcast with their kids, which is really good.
They're red-pilling their young...
Early teenagers and sometimes they're 11 or 12 year olds.
It's really good.
I'm so happy to do that.
Sorry, carry on.
So the relationship that I hear is when people are unnaturally confined with their partners and they've made the old mistake of having an expectation that they haven't expressed a lot of agreement to.
They might expect their partner to be really happy to spend 93% of their time with them and it might be their partner never agreed to that, that they can only manage one day a week or two days a week if it's a long weekend.
So what happens is that you get an unexpressed expectation.
And then because that's not actually met, that's followed by disappointment.
And to prepare for disappointment, you need to expect things and not share that expectation with people.
And that leads to resentment and loads of other things.
So how do you get them?
My favourite point.
Yeah, for me, it's about expressing your expectations, which you need to be fairly confident in yourself to be able to do that, because people might go, no, I'm not doing that.
I don't want to spend 93% of my time with you.
I'll put you down for Saturdays.
How would that be?
The rest of the time, I'll be Skyping with my girlfriends or with my mates, or I'll be standing in the garden shouting at my neighbours.
I didn't get a relationship with you so that I could spend all my time with you.
So that's why I got a job.
So you get them to express that and that makes it better.
No.
Sometimes they express it and their partner says, I don't agree.
I never agreed to that.
I thought you knew that.
Because there's this illusion that we know each other when we're in a relationship, that we know the other person exactly like us and they want what we want and they think as we do.
But the reality is we're all wildly different to each other as human beings.
Well, especially if they're not...
Yeah, totally.
I mean, there's no way that we think the same way as them.
No, no.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and I've got lots of experience of that being true for me.
Actually, how does the sex balance split down your clients?
Do you deal with more loopy men or more loopy women?
I breathe in sharply.
I thought for a moment he was going to say, how's my sex life?
I've been in lockdown.
I'm not entirely sure I won.
So I'm unusual that in having an equal balance of gender between male and female, most counsellors and therapists, I think, see almost exclusively female 70-80% I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's the way I present myself that attracts that.
So if I'm dealing with a female client who is complaining about her partner not being what she'd expected, women will come in and they'll say, he's boring, he's dull, and I say, okay, what do you want?
And she'll say, I want him to be spontaneous.
Sometimes he'll be there, he'll be dragged in like a confused puppy, he doesn't know what he's done wrong.
I say, well, what do you mean?
She says, I want him to do things that he knows will please me.
He knows what I'm thinking.
You don't want him to be spontaneous.
That would be dangerous because he might go off and do wildly irrational things.
You want him to be obedient to the stuff that you expect without you ever having to suggest that.
And they say, yes, I do.
And I say, how's that expectation working out for you?
So you call them on it, basically.
Yeah, totally.
Because they have an unexpressed expectation which will always lead to disappointment unless it's agreed to and then resentment.
And they start to resent them when they notice after a period of time together that they're not magically doing everything they did that they did in the early days and that's what led to the expectation.
So are you showing them the unrealistic nature of their expectations and making them kind of see themselves better?
Pretty much.
Yeah, I'm saying it might be realistic, but where's your evidence for that?
Has this person got a track record of behaving in the way that you hoped for?
This loops back to what we were saying earlier.
You can train your bloke to do this, and they'll go, well, I don't want him to.
I want him to do it naturally, and then it's authentic.
And I get, yeah, I understand that completely, but the likelihood of him behaving spontaneously and authentically in a way that you haven't yet told him, do you play the lottery?
You probably stand more chance of winning the lottery than that happening.
And they say, well, I don't like that.
I say, well, I can show you using NLP a style of manipulation that will make you both happier.
And I absolutely label it manipulation because I want them to know that in order to use their emotional intelligence to influence their less emotionally intelligent male partner, it's going to need some manipulation.
And I go, well, it's not right to manipulate people.
I go, well, will he be happier if he gets it right more often?
And I go, yeah.
I go, well, you'd be happy if he gets it right more often.
And I go, yeah.
I say, well, let's manipulate him into doing that because you're the judge of how right he's being.
Okay, so just give me a few brief tricks that women can try.
I say, what is it that men want?
And they give me a variety of answers and I go, nope, the chief thing, and you can see this in the book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
Well, it's a hard read.
There's a lot of stuff in there.
But what men most want is they want to be right.
And women say, I try to make him right because I don't want him getting big-headed.
And I go, no, no, no, no, you've got to be giving out samples of your approval to him so he gets encouraged to seek your approval.
So I get them to catch him doing things right.
And this is why I label it manipulation, because once their partner has become addicted to their approval, which has probably been lacking for a good period of time, they've stopped being right for a long time, they've been wrong comprehensively.
Yeah.
Then I'll say, what you need to do now is, stage two is to start talking about the behaviour you want as though it's already happening in an approving tone.
They go, what do you mean?
I say, well, if he's mean, you might say to him, the thing I love about you, or I say to my girlfriends, they're both winning lines, is that even though, and then you give his negative mindset, even though money's tight and you don't know the future, you have to look after the security of the family and enough money for your motorbikes and cars.
No, I'm joking about that.
Don't mention stuff that's negative.
But even though...
What I really love about you is that you're secretly a very generous individual.
Yes, I am.
Yeah, totally.
God, we are so basic, aren't we?
We blokes.
Yeah, completely.
And occasionally I'll get a bloke conceived and they'll go, I can't get anything right.
And I'll say, what is it that women want?
What do women really, really, really want?
And he'll go, I don't know.
I can't say what I say.
Look, women want to...
And again, this is a huge generalisation.
I've found it through a lot.
Women want to be loved and adored by their partner and considered to be the most important female person in the world to their male partner.
And I've had lots and lots of females nod profoundly when I say that.
Nobody's challenged that.
Nobody's said, I don't want that at all.
And I say...
What is it that you are doing in your relationship that makes her feel adored and precious at the most?
He's like, no, I did that when we first met.
I'll do that before I die, but I don't need to do it in between, you know, all that love and romance and being nice and being considerate and listening to them and don't need to do it.
I said, okay, how's that working out for you?
You're a cunning one.
Yeah, yeah.
We can't be rude names at that point, yeah.
That's really good, okay.
Can I continue?
Yes, no, no, no, come on.
If I'm working with a couple together, which happens 5-10% of the time, I'll say to her, what would he have to do So that you know that he loves you and adores you.
And I say to him, pay close attention.
This is a million dollar secret here.
And she'll say, the ridiculous example I use, she'll say he's got to buy me a cauliflower on a string one day a month.
And the blokes that go, cauliflower on a string?
That's ridiculous.
I'll never do that.
How does that mean that I love you?
They don't get any results or any change.
The blokes who lean forward and go, hmm, what kind of cauliflower?
How long should the string be?
Which day of the month?
The ones who get fine detailed definition.
Yeah.
For example, in the mornings, if I'm up before my other half and it's my turn to make the toast, I'll say, would you like white bread or brown bread or crumpets today?
She'll go, I'll have white bread today.
And I'll go, one or two slices.
And she'll go, two today.
And I'll go, how thick would you like the butter?
Because it does vary, honestly.
She's a woman of many different tastes.
And then I'll say, would you like Jam, nice strawberry jam, or would you like marmalade or marmite?
Now, you might think that that's too many flipping questions for toast.
What it conveys to her is that I'm absolutely interested in getting it right the very best that I can.
Does that make sense?
You've made it all sound like too easy now.
I mean, people...
Well, I can make it easier if you want.
Yeah, go on then.
Yeah, go on.
I was off to Waitrose recently and I said, do you want anything while I'm there?
And she said, yeah, guess a couple of nice cucumbers.
Now, I'm a very literal person.
I wasn't just going to get any old cucumbers.
And I'm a hunter.
I think a lot of men have got the hunter bit in there.
And I looked at the organic ones in Waitrose and didn't look as nice as the ones not labelled organic, although I guess they're all organic by nature.
There weren't any metallic sheen cucumbers there.
Sorry, joke to myself.
And I picked up two really nice ones, took them home, and in true hunter style, I went into the cave, I flung these cucumbers on the cave floor and said, man killed cucumbers, man strong, man get good woman, you know?
No, I didn't say that.
That was inside my head.
I said, I'll get you a couple of nice cucumbers from Waitrose.
And she looked at me and she said, they look really nice.
And, hmm, now I'm right.
I've got it correct.
I said, you're right.
And she said, thank you for that.
Did you spend a long time looking?
And I said, yeah, I did actually.
And I told her the story of my ex-wife to make her full valued.
And because it was true and I could be congruent in my expression of that.
And later I got a reward.
As she was eating the cucumber, she said, These are the best cucumbers I've ever tasted.
Man, make fire.
Man, kill cucumbers.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
That's really good.
Okay, so we've dealt with relationships.
I mean, that's going to be very helpful to lots of people in the lockdown.
What are the other ones?
Do you think depression or...?
Yeah, I think so.
And if people go to my website, which I can...
You can advertise.
You say, yes.
Google Steve Wichett, W-I-C-H-E-T-T, and that will get a number of hits.
Google quite likes me.
Or they can go to the website.
It's a long title.
It's MLP Change Works.
NLP for Neuro Linguistic Programming.
I call my company that because NLP Change Works.
If they go there and they look on the resources section, I put loads of free stuff on there.
There's links to videos and books and that.
I've got a few sets of tips, and I do a one-page tip sheet.
I've got a depression tip sheet, which has got some really nice stuff on there for people who are exploring depressive behaviours.
I'm not a psychiatrist.
I'm not a psychologist.
So I can't diagnose people as having depressive according to DSM-5 tick list criteria.
But I can say to people, rather than me giving you an unhelpful label, you are a depressive or you are depressed.
I say you might just be doing...
Behaving in a way that people who feel depressed sometimes do and that takes it out of the entity into the behavior because changing a whole person is quite difficult but so I call it tongue-in-cheek Steve's seven secrets for dealing with depression and then I get them to look at how they're sustaining the negative thoughts and feelings that tend to go along with that and The stuff they're saying to themselves,
whether they're sharing this with anybody else.
Most people don't.
The language that they're using to themselves.
My life is terrible.
It's always going to be...
Like Marvin the paranoid android.
Here am I with a brain the size of a planet making tea.
And people are really good at dismissing all the lovely stuff about themselves.
They often slump down in the chairs.
They fold up.
They find a favorite place to assume that possession, a chair or a bed or a corner room.
And they start to run almost mantra meditation negative.
I'm no good.
My life is a failure.
My life won't be...
Nothing will happen for me.
And I say, look, could you...
In the tips, I say, could you sit up straight, please?
And...
Adopt the tone of voice you'd use to talk to a friend.
Because a lot of people's internal dialogue is really crappy tonality.
It would depress anybody listening to that.
So I say, how would you talk to a friend, a teenager or a child that needed encouraging?
You can hear that in my tonality that shifts because it feels good when I say that.
And then the moment they think about adopting that, The part of their brain that reinforces their stuckness Actually says, well, I could do that, but...
And they start to, yes, but, and what if, mate?
And I think, ah, that's it.
That's how you've kept yourself stuck in this thing.
You're objecting to the change.
You're dismissing it.
You're diminishing it.
You're making it irrelevant to you.
You're undermining it.
You're overwhelming yourself with stuff that is a familiar habit.
And I do something corny at the end of my tips.
I say...
Have a little smile.
Dr.
Richard Bandler told me that on the brain cortex, the motor cortex, the muscles that are attached to the corners of the mouth, I believe this to be true.
I've never known him to say, that's it.
When you smile, it actually activates the bit of the brain that's next to the serotonin gland.
So you're literally squirting serotonin into your brain.
Serotonin is the feel-good, happy chemical.
So people actually cheer up for a second when they smile.
Right.
It's like that whole thing about it takes less muscles to smile than it does to frown.
And I like to say it takes even less muscles to punch in the mouth.
Anybody who says that to you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's one tip.
Yeah, so really, I would say the top thing, and I cunningly wove all of my tips into my chat there, but I'll do them in order.
Top thing is talk to somebody else.
Don't sit and stew.
And it's all listed out on the tip sheet.
People can download it for free.
But actually share it rather than sustaining it in isolation.
And listen to how you're talking to other people, the language that you use, what self-limiting patterns of language are in your thoughts and your utterances to other people.
And then notice the way that you're sitting.
Notice...
Depression mainly, notice how you are.
Most people can't be depressed when they sit up straight and they're erect and their body language is open.
So I'll then check what tone of voice are they using, like I did with Marvin the Paranoid Android.
If they go, my life is terrible, there's no hope for me, in a downbeat, warmful tone.
I say, even if it's silly, just try saying that in a cartoon character's voice.
My life is miserable.
I'm so unhappy.
And it will change the impact of that for you considerably.
Most people don't do depression when they're out in a Zumba class.
Most people don't do depression when they're walking in nature or when they're skipping or gardening.
Most people sit somewhere and implode on themselves.
So I say, get out of here.
Get out and do something.
Become active, because that seems to activate a different set of responses within the body.
And then when you start to change, when you think about things you could do, next tip, watch out for the yes but.
I want to be happy, but I've been depressed for a long, long time.
I say, well, that's true.
You've been depressed for a long time, but you want to be happy.
So I cunningly switch it round.
So they're left with the clean end of the stick rather than the other end.
It seems to orient the brain in the direction of change and happiness.
And then finally, that nice little smile thing that we did there.
Paul McKenna, and I did this with a room full of chartered accountants once, Paul McKenna says you can change people's state if their chartered accountants just mention the word roleplay and their change will state rapidly, they don't like it.
But Paul McKenna would say, you people aren't happy enough.
He would say, I want you to give me your best smile, your biggest smile, and a room full of people go, We go, oh my goodness, there's a room full of serial killer smiles there.
And really open it up.
Think of something happy and smile.
And of course, that would produce endorphin changes within people.
I've had anxious and depressed flights, so I train to laugh like a pirate.
A big belly laugh or raise endorphins.
And I've had partners of these clients say to me, that's mad.
That's a crazy thing to do.
But their state done half change when they laugh like a pirate.
Okay, that's very helpful.
Laugh like a pirate.
Okay.
Have you ever had clients who are psychopaths?
No, I don't think so.
I've had a couple of psychotic clients for years who have trouble distinguishing their reality from shared reality, but that's easy to work with.
For me, a psychopath is somebody who has no moral filter and no obedience to law and common decency and just wants to hurt people.
They're evilly motivated.
So never had anybody I got identified as that.
Maybe they wouldn't come and see you.
Maybe almost by definition they would not.
Yeah.
I think they might get a clue about my solution-focused approach and my positivity and they might think, no, they might be a good therapist buster, but this one can't necessarily be busted.
Yeah, yeah.
One of the things I've learned, I don't think I ever would have committed suicide, but I think a lot of depressed people do toy with the idea.
It's much easier to end it all, to cease upon the midnight with no pain or whatever.
What's the answer to that?
Well, I say to people, it's a natural thought for most adults and for some children to think of the peace that they would get from ending their lives.
Most people tend not to dwell on it.
It will cross their minds or we'll see it in a film or they'll have a moment of angst or something.
And most people don't put enough effort into it.
Some people, if they're depressed, spend a long time dwelling upon, they call it suicidal ideation.
So people can do that.
But I quote Richard Bandler, and I say, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary time of difficulty.
And they go, oh yes.
And then I use more as material.
I say, if you believe in the afterlife, you do get reincarnated even after suicide.
You have to stand in line for thousands and thousands of years.
Do you like queuing up in the bank or supermarkets?
And they go, no.
Sometimes, if it's a temporary thought and they really want to say it to me because they're dead worried that they've got these thoughts and tendencies, sometimes I'll say to them, as a way of helping dissuade them, if they said they want to be dissuaded, either explicitly or implicitly, then I'll say, okay, you've thought about killing yourself, who would you like to find your body?
Immediately think about the very worst person they could find.
Now, you need to be careful how you use that.
It's only safe to be that provocative when you know you can handle the client.
And then I'll talk about how serious their suicidal thoughts are.
Have they made any preparations?
Have they written farewell letters?
Have they got the means and method?
And I'll cheerfully discuss how unpleasant some methods of suicide can be if they're seeking to be Talked out of their dark thoughts.
You know, what could possibly go wrong with that suicide method and so on.
That's interesting.
So that works, does it?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
A friend of mine used to say to them, when they said, I'm thinking of being suicidal, he used to say, can I have your stereo?
And they go, no, I spent years building that, I'm not giving it away.
And he goes, so you're not done with it yet.
So, can I have your car then?
Could you give me your car keys today?
And again, you need to be careful when you're using that kind of provocative thing.
So although I don't work a great deal with suicidal clients, it definitely comes up in conversations.
After we've got some good changes, people go, yeah, but I've had this worrying thought.
That's perfectly normal and reassure them.
But if they made preparation and plans and they got the method and they're all ready to go, then I say, I think you should go and have a chat with your doctor, get a referral.
Perhaps a psychiatrist might be necessary.
Maybe phone Mind or the Samaritans.
They're both brilliant organisations that know just how to support and be there for people who've got those kinds of concerns.
Yeah, interesting.
Actually, What you say about transitory problems is very true, isn't it?
I mean, I can't remember when it was I first came to see you, but whatever problems I was discussing with you at the time, they're not the problems I've got now.
They're completely different.
Absolutely.
Replaced by bigger and better ones?
Well, you know, I don't want to go into too much detail, but I think that When times are really bad, you can kind of try and commit mini suicide by upping the level of things that are bad for you.
like for example you might smoke a lot more absolutely or you might take more risks and definitely what my message to myself when I went through those stages would be hang on a second mate if you completely ruin yourself now and you ruin your health you're not going to be in a very good state to enjoy life when when things get better because they will exactly yeah yeah.
And I heard this beautiful phrase many years ago that's a great thing that carries a lot of people through difficult times.
The phrase is, this too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
So whatever difficulty you're in, it might be replaced by a bigger and brassier difficulty.
Life might be fantastic.
But I think that the more we focus on what we want or what we don't want, the more we get what we want or what we don't want.
You literally get the more of what you focus on.
So focusing on it passing and being completely optimistic about good times ahead is a brilliant way to navigate there.
Yes.
You see, again, it all sounds slightly dodgy, doesn't it?
It sounds like...
Too sick and easy.
Well, yeah, voodoo, magic.
It sounds like, yeah, if you want, be the change you want to be, I suppose.
100%.
Yeah.
And yet, I mean, isn't part of the theory of NLP is that I remember the first time I came to see you and with my kind of depressive thoughts and my anxiety thoughts and you talked about I think rabbits running through the grass and wearing out all these bunny rabbit tracks like these grooves and it is within your power especially if you're creative like me that
you use your imagination to Flatten those bunny rabbit or replace those bunny rabbit paths with different ones and you can do that.
Make up good stuff.
It's just a question of content.
Change the channel on the TV to one that's got nice programs on it.
And to the person who's sitting there thinking, oh god he's such a wanker, I can't stand it.
He's just, what do you say to them?
Just occasionally, when a client comes in, rather than when I make him a drink or a tea or a coffee or, you know, the little bit of ice break a few minutes at the beginning, occasionally, instead of saying to them, how have you been, or telling them how magnificent my life is, I'll go, I got soaked at the bus stop this morning and the bus was completely missed.
Don't you hate it?
And they brighten up considerably.
And I remind myself that I have to be in rapport with people to help them change.
If I'm mismatching my state and my life and my attitude with theirs, We're never going to get there.
So I sort of dumb it down a little bit until we can get rapport.
And then I start to lead them in the direction towards the light side of the false.
That's true.
I can see that.
I can see that people might find your kind of upness kind of insult.
Irritating.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and also they might consider it to be unreal.
They might think, okay, he's got this smiley manner and he's all positive and nodding and stuff, but actually underneath he's...
Yeah, I'm checking inside now.
I feel terrible.
Thank you.
Well, good.
I'm glad I finally talked you down from your cloud.
I say I have an unreasonable belief that I can have an abundant lifestyle.
I say it's just a workable fantasy.
I've got no real evidence, but it feels great believing that.
So I dismiss it whilst proclaiming it, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that does make sense.
So we've done marital relations.
We've done don't kill yourself.
We've done depression.
Have we missed out on the other key kind of Yeah, bits of anxiety and bits of confidence.
I can talk about those if you would.
Yeah.
What's your poison of choice?
That's probably a negative way of describing it.
Do you want to go for anxiety or confidence?
I thought you were talking about my drug habits.
Oh, no!
Sorry.
Yeah, no, I do.
Do you want to...
I'm near towards something.
I certainly get anxiety sometimes, so talk about anxiety.
Okay.
People say to me, I bet you never get anxious, Stephen.
I go, I flippin' do.
Not very often, but anxiety is a natural thing when we're going outside our own comfort zone.
Occasionally we'll talk about my own anxiety experiences in the same way that I did earlier, so they know that I'm not some immortal person who's never suffered this.
You don't know that?
You don't know you're not immortal?
No, no, not yet.
I might be in this life or another.
And then I'll say to them, look, when I came to write my anxiety tips list, which is freely available from my website, the nine essential ingredients for anxiety, I thought...
Because I've got this and I regard myself as special and talented, I thought I'm not going to talk about people being broken or messed up or weak or inadequate.
I'm going to say that you need some very special qualities in order to do anxiety really properly.
So, not many dull people are able to do anxiety really well.
And I say it because it's the mindset I'm coming from.
And also, the first thing you need is a bright and active mind.
I think we can both agree, James, you've got a bright and active mind.
The next thing you need is a good imagination.
Because unless you can imagine things, you can't be anxious about stuff unless you can So people are like, yeah, okay.
Yeah, exactly.
You're doubly special.
And then the third thing I look for is, have you got the kind of mind that needs constant stimulation?
Because if you don't feed your mind good stuff, it will go looking for bad stuff.
I do solitaire and crossword puzzles and Sudoku just to give myself the challenge.
And I take on big projects and research and stuff to give myself the stimulation.
A lot of the time people need that stimulation, but they find the negative stuff more stimulating than the positive stuff.
Well, you've got to amp up the rule of the positive.
Number four, I talk a little bit about the frontal cortex and the ability to see into the future.
Ironically, anxious people are very good at seeing into the future for other people.
They only need to hear about one new relationship of a friend or relative or a colleague or one new job or one new place and their brain is set up and they hear one more thing and they go, I know exactly where that's going to go and they write enormous amounts of the time Ironically, it's a blind spot for people who are good at anxiety.
Almost all of the negative, anxious thoughts they've had about themselves turn out to be wrong.
So they're worrying themselves unnecessarily.
Because anxious people, me included, are good at telling other people how they think things are going to go.
It makes them brilliant advisers and friends and therapists and very insightful.
They forget that almost all the stuff that they'd threatened or imagined happening to themselves never turned out.
And they generally say, do you mind being wrong?
Because you've been wrong a lot about the things you're worried about.
They go, I hate you, Steve.
So how come they're right about other people but not about themselves?
I don't have a good explanation.
I've been researching it for about seven or eight years and reading about it and studying it and posing the question.
I think it's something to do with our subjective sense of self and the frontal lobe of the brain that's really good at looking into the future and behaviours and stuff.
I think for people with a good imagination, a bright and active mind, a need for stimulation, that somehow makes a cocktail of thinking or thinking styles that prevents people from realizing that the stuff they're dreading is never going to happen.
That's my best explanation so far.
I'm interested.
If anybody knows, I'd love to know.
Anybody's got an answer I haven't come across yet or one they've generated.
Often, people need some kind of trauma or illness, this is point number six, to have a proper start to anxiety.
They might be going along through their lives of work with a few people who've never had an anxious thought in their lives until there's a massive stress and change of health or change at work, and their brain started protecting them by bringing on, wouldn't it be terrible if this happened, and making them worry about things.
And the final thing is you need a good proximity sensor.
I say if you're scared of flying and your next flight is five years time and it's in an airport that you've got no way of getting to, people won't worry.
But if it's tomorrow or in 10 minutes and you're in the departure lounge, the proximity sensor says to the brain, take this seriously.
You must now worry about this because it's real.
It's immediate, if that makes sense.
So the further away it is in imagination, just the way we can think about it differently, we can literally push it away and it doesn't seem so impactful.
Oh, don't worry about that.
That will take care of itself and stuff.
Which it normally does.
Yeah, exactly.
And finally, on the end of my tips, I've got instructions, very tongue-in-cheek, for how to take anxiety to such an exquisite level.
You could become a master in doing panic attacks.
And most people don't.
I haven't yet had a client who's able to do panic attacks after session one.
Once I point out what they're doing, And properly anxious people can get to 7 or 8 out of 10.
For me, an anxiety attack is 8 or 9 or 10 out of 10.
That's what I was doing when I was 25 years old and running out of restaurants and cinemas.
An anxiety, got to get out of here, can't stay here and so on.
So proper anxiety.
But I say to people, these are the two things you need to do to have a proper full-on panic attack.
And please don't do it.
Just think about not doing it.
I'm joking.
But step number one, you need to imagine the worst thing that could happen, the worst social embarrassment or disaster or fainting or falling over or vomiting.
What's the dreadful thing?
And then having imagined that very vividly, The last step is you need to behave completely normally and suppress it and look like the swan gliding along the surface of the lake.
And those two things together, imagining one thing but trying to be another, set up a feedback loop in the brain.
And it's like putting the microphone close to the loudspeaker and the brain just goes, boom, panicked, I don't know what to do.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's some stuff about anxiety.
What else can I tell you about anxiety?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, the thing is, right this second, I... Yeah?
Well, I mean, this always, when I speak to you anyway, it always makes me kind of relaxed and happy.
So it's...
Me too.
That's why I'm doing it.
Yeah.
I'll send you some money.
But sometimes, you know, I mean, I've definitely gone through...
Weird shit problems in this lockdown where I have kind of kneed to Steve on my shoulder.
But I have used some of your tricks.
Excellent.
I'll tell you what's been bothering me recently.
I think that Where I live, even though they're quite a long way in the distance, there are some enormous wind turbines.
This could just be my personal obsession because I hate wind turbines anyway.
But I think they are producing low frequency noise which can travel over very long distances.
We're talking 10 miles or more.
And on certain days they drive me Kind of, yeah, quite Delally.
And so it's quite difficult because I can't move house.
I can't just up sticks and say, well, look, you know, who's to know?
Well, I might move to a different area where there's some of the problems.
So I have to find a way of dealing with this massive intrusion into my life, into my world, and into my brain, my head, apart from anything else.
So you have to kind of distract yourself with With thoughts that get you round it, don't you?
And one of the tricks I use is that trick where you imagine that there's light coming into the top of your head And sort of cleaning out your brain and I imagine that sort of purifying...
I mean, this sounds like all bollocks, but it works.
Cleaning out all the nasty stuff and then you get different colors.
I mean, these are kind of cheap tricks, but they work, don't they?
Isn't it beautiful?
Yeah.
You see, people can use the power of their mind, the focus of their imagination to make themselves feel bad.
Or use it to make themselves feel good, which is the stuff that I've learned and the stuff I share with other people.
And once you know how to suggest that to people, to get them to experiment with it, it becomes quite addictive.
People think, oh, I can choose to feel good for no good reason.
And the family says, how good can you feel for no good reason?
what's the most amount of pleasure you could stand in your life that's good I'll tell you what's since I the thing that's made me happy it's apart from you know nice things like family and stuff I mean that's important to friends The things that made me really happy is this thing that I'm doing now, you know, not just this podcast but all the podcasts I've been doing.
I've got a Patreon, if you know what a Patreon is.
A Patreon is like where you get people to sponsor your work and so obviously I can't just go look I'm bloody great, me, James Dellencoyle, you know you love me, give me some dosh.
It doesn't quite, you could do that and give it a go.
The podcast is really popular.
I think it's one of the best things I do.
I just enjoy doing it.
And I can just totally...
What I like about it is I can be congruent.
I can be totally myself.
And I'm not answerable to anybody.
I don't know why I've got this thing, Steve.
Where it comes from.
Because I mean, I was...
I'm head of house.
I mean, okay, admittedly, by default, I stayed on to do the Oxbridge term.
But I was, you know, I was a prefect, at least.
You know, I'm not a total rebel.
I'm not one of the really bad boys.
But somehow, I've always hated people.
I think what it comes down to is people I consider slightly less talented than me.
Telling me what to do, which obviously is most people.
I'll give you an example of somebody who's good.
One of the best editors I ever worked to, ever, ever worked to, was Sarah Vine.
Do you know who Sarah Vine is?
Indeed.
Sarah Vine, Michael Gove's wife, although obviously that's not how she defines herself, but, you know, a brilliant columnist in her own right.
But she was my editor.
On the Times.
She was running the art section for a time.
And I worked...
She commissioned me to do stuff.
And sometimes she gave me commissions, which I, you know, I'm not sure I want to do this piece.
And she said, you know, you can do it.
You'll be brilliant.
You'll be absolutely fantastic.
And whatever...
It's almost like she'd had sessions with you.
She hasn't, I don't think.
But she...
She made me feel that what I did was really, really good.
And I could just be entirely myself.
And the more me I was, the better it was.
And I've never had a better editor.
I've had so many editors who try and impose their kind of crappy value judgments and their idea of how things...
And the problem is they're not as good as you.
You know, I mean, I'm kind of about...
I think I'm pretty much at the top of my game.
It hasn't been reflected in my salary necessarily, but I think I'm pretty good at the shit I do.
And finally, my Patreon thing has enabled me to gather, I call it Café d'Ellingpole, To gather a bunch of, a sort of clientele if you like, a bit like your clientele, who find what you do very helpful and they pay you for it.
People like me like the shit I do and I feel totally liberated and this is where I'm going to go with my life.
It's like I finally achieved the congruence that I guess I have the internet to thank for that because obviously in the old days when there were barriers to entry I mean you know if you didn't own the printing presses and the newspaper you were kind of limited as to what I suppose you could print pamphlets like they did in you know during the Civil War but you know what I mean it's been very liberating and Which is why I started off with that question about
Congress.
But I do think it's the key to happiness.
It's like being happy in your skin.
How did you start getting a Patreon or Patreons?
I'm not familiar with the words.
What's the mechanics of setting that up?
There are various American sites.
One of them is called Patreon, one of them is called Subscribestar, and they tend to be used by creatives to monetize what they do in a world where, for example, I mean, no.
Ten years ago, I used to think, I've almost reached the stage of my career where people know I'm good enough now to give me that column on the Sunday Times and it's going to be a James Delly Paul column and it's going to be, I get paid a fuck ton of money.
I mean, you used to do that.
It used to happen.
And it never came.
And I used to feel quite resentful about this.
Why has that person got it?
I don't care about that because I don't want the goodwill of those newspapers anymore.
I think they're a bit rubbish, frankly.
I think what I do...
I'd have to have an editor sitting over me telling me what to do.
Whereas now, this is only a kind of recent phenomenon, a product of our changing times.
But I'm sure it's the way for...
I mean, in a way it's sad.
It means the world is atomizing.
It means that when you and I were lads, People, everyone got the Sunday Times, say, at the weekend.
These did, didn't they?
And they probably got, you know, a couple of other papers as well.
They worked their way through them.
So everyone wrote the same columnists and there was a kind of shared experience, a bit like the shared experience where everyone watched the Morecambe and Wise show.
Nobody does that anymore.
Well not least because more of the wise are dead but that world is gone and but it's kind of everything is more niche and bespoke now so like you go to the you go to the Cafe Delingpole and you get your special blend of Delingpole flat white and you get all this and it's really nice It's fascinating.
I'm going to look at that, find out if it's a market or an area or a thing I could do.
Well, it might work for you.
I mean, you've got more of an obvious business model than me, in that you must have high-end clients with serious problems who are prepared to pay you top dollar to sort out their shit.
Absolutely.
Or you can do corporate, can't you?
I bet that.
Can you do corporate?
Do you do that?
I don't want to tell my soul too much.
So on my website, on the corporate bit, it says, here's my day rate for stuff that I don't really want to do, but I can do.
And here's my day rate for stuff that meets my values and beliefs and missions.
I charge a lot less for stuff that's fun to do and is who I want to be.
So I say I can't be bought, but I can be hired if the price is high enough.
That's absolutely right.
I think, see again, that's about, I think, integrity.
I don't want to sound too high-minded here, but I think that's a key part of congruence.
Being honest and recognizing our market niche.
Occasionally people will ring me up and they haven't seen the website so they don't know what I charge.
And I go, I'm happy to help, there's no obligation I'll chat to you, but do you know what my fees are?
And when I tell them, sometimes they go, blimey, that's a bit more than I'd expect.
And I go, no problem, I can recommend you to colleagues who charge a load less than I do.
You can look around.
Occasionally, they'll go, how come you charge that much money?
And I say, well, I think of it this way.
In hairdressing terms, I'm sort of at a senior stylist level with the experience that I've got.
And I think it's a true...
And it's also a nice self-deprecating way that I'm not taking myself too seriously.
I've studied for years and I've got this qualification.
I think the last count I had about 37 letters after my name, but I don't put them on the card because I'm not that much into making, bigging myself up.
I don't want to be bigger and better because then the clients can only be worse than me and that's not a good model.
Yeah, but nevertheless, I think you've kind of got it sorted.
I've done it for a long time, Matt.
I don't like worrying about you.
So Steve, this is really to say nothing but, hello!
People might not know but our video, I've never used Zoom before, it completely froze and that whatever other clever things we were going to say are going to be lost forever and actually all I want to say is thanks for a lovely chat.
I think we've said enough.
We've covered all the bases, haven't we?
I think.
I thought you'd got to the end a natural break and you decided to just cut me off.
Yeah, it's the perfect segue.
So I want to say how enjoyable it's been.
It's great to talk to you and catch up with you and thanks for letting me pontificate a lot.
I hope that the number of people who find you helpful outnumber the people who think you're I seem to be getting away with it quite a lot.
Well, you've helped me and so I wanted you to help other people.
So thank you.
Bless you.
Cheers mate.
You take care of yourself.
Nice to talk to you.
Enjoy.
Bye bye.
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