Self Confidence, A Male Perspective with Jack Chambers Ward

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the SEO Mindset podcast where we aim to bring you knowledge and share information and chat generally on topics that will help you thrive in your SEO career. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Jack Chambers-Ward and we're going to be talking about a topic that we've discussed before, confidence. But today we're going to be speaking about it from a male perspective. Now, for those who don't know Jack Chambers-Ward and I don't think there's anyone out there, but just in case there is, I'm going to tell you a little bit about him. So he is an SEO specialist. He currently works at Candour as the marketing and partnership manager. He is a passionate podcaster, hosts Search with Candour, hosts The Sequeliezers podcast, that was a job getting that word out. And he also joins Sarah and myself. We are a trio in Brighton with the live podcast. So we host that on the Wednesday night before brightonSEO, and we talk about what we call overlooked topics, things like anxiety and confidence. So that's a great collaboration we have with Jack. He is also, in case this is not enough, he's also co founder of community Neurodivergence in SEO. He is married to the lovely Emma, who although I've never met her, I have a kinship with her. We are Vimto twins and they recently went on their first cruise. And on a personal note, I've only recently got to know Jack, but he is one of my favorite people. He is kind, he is honest, he's respectful, and he's a fantastic listener, which is probably what contributes to his podcasting success. But today we get to listen to him. Now, before we dive into the topic, a reminder that if you're enjoying what Sarah and I do and would like to support the SEO Mindset podcast, then there's a few ways you could do it. One way is to drop us a donation via the buy me a coffee. The link is in the show notes. And also please share this podcast with anyone and everyone that you think would benefit from it because we would love to reach even more people. But now it's time for the topic. Jack, welcome and thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me on. Yeah, it's really nice to actually have a one on one conversation because like you said, we do the trio that is me, you and Sarah at the Brighton SEO episodes. But it's nice to have an episode of SEO Mindset. I've had both you and Sarah as previous guests on Search with Candour as well. So yeah, very fun to be finally crossing over in this direction and going to chat some confidence with you today, Tazmin.

No, that's brilliant. And confidence, like we said, we spoke about it in the live podcast and often because a lot of the people I work with are women. A lot of my clients are women. Confidence is often perceived as a woman thing, but today I really would love to hear from you. What is it from the male perspective? So if we just start off with what does confidence mean to you?

I think it is a male thing as well. Absolutely. And it's funny coming round to thinking about it, because so much of the marketing industry is saturated with straight, cisgendered white guys like myself. It's kind of weird to be asked to have my perspective because usually you can't escape the male perspective in most senses. But I think confidence is a thing a lot of people need to be thinking about and talking about. And to me, I think it's having trust in your own abilities and having your own understanding of where your strengths and where your weaknesses are.

Right.

Knowing yourself and knowing your abilities, your values, all this kind of stuff. And having confidence. There you go. Having confidence in yourself is a thing where I think a lot of men struggle with, and we'll get onto it in a second, but a lot of people go in the other direction as well. But yeah, confidence, to me, I think, is that fundamental, trusting your own abilities and understanding where your strengths are. Essentially.

In the world of tech, there are many outwardly looking confident men, and they have a certain Persona about them. They have a certain way of being, and that can sometimes not feel very nice. It's almost that arrogance rather than what you have described as confidence, and that's often perceived as confidence and then is mimicked by younger men, sometimes mimicked by women. So what do you think? Why is it that there is that confusion between confidence and arrogance?

I think there is a very kind of thin line between the two. You can very easily, almost accidentally cross over into arrogance just by showing that you are confident in something. And sometimes, even if you are just genuinely being confident about yourself and your abilities, some people will perceive that as arrogance. And even if you don't intend it that way, I think it can be crossed over. For me, the difference is that deep down, do you know that you're good at the thing? Do you understand yourself? You're aware of, like I said, your own values and strengths. If you're not, and you're kind of shilling to the people and lying to the other people, that's kind of where the arrogant side comes in, where you're bigging yourself up beyond your own abilities and beyond your own kind of limits and things like that. I think that's where the element of, like you said, especially common in the tech industry and marketing, where you and I work a lot in Tazmin, there's that element of these people who are big public speakers and project themselves as incredibly confident and often borders into arrogance. And you get that kind of very slippery slope of them lying about, oh, I made a million dollars, or I have a million visitors to my website or whatever it is. And if anyone's ever been on LinkedIn, you've probably seen this people bigging themselves up and exaggerating all this kind of stuff. I think that's where that line goes from being honest with yourself and talking about your strengths and then exaggerating them and kind of adding a little element of falsehood and lying in there, I think, is where it kind of slips into the arrogance side of things.

And what do you think that falsehood does to other people around them? What is the impact of that to maybe younger people in the team, maybe people who, women. I mean, I hear a lot from women who say, I don't get a chance to speak, I don't get a chance to get those opportunities. I don't get a chance to show what I am capable of doing. Because this, and I'm going to generalize here, this louder, bigger than reality male is taking over.

So in a way, being in a position of leadership, and this is something I always used to say to my children, that with privileges come responsibilities and vice versa, urge everyone out there who has a platform to help those people who perhaps are struggling to get their voices heard. But you touched on something on LinkedIn. There'll be lots of people who are saying, I made this much money, I hustled in this way. And it almost feels like marketing and SEO pressures and this normalization of hustle culture, it seems to be encouraged by these confident, successful men. What are your thoughts on that and what do you think the effects of that is?

We started off by talking about, what is confidence? And you were saying, confidence is this ability to trust yourself. It's also the ability to trust yourself to look after yourself, which is definitely what it's wrapped up in. And this year, for the first time, I've created a Google calendar that sits over everything else, but it's all of my self care. So what time I'm going to wake up, what I'm going to do, and how many hours I'm going to give myself before I dive into work, when I'm going to have lunch, when I'm going to finish work, when I'm going to go to bed. And I now fit in anything that I need to get done in between those hours. I won't sacrifice that. And last Friday, I realized I don't want to work Friday afternoons anymore. I'm not just not going to do it. So I've now added, that's my afternoon off because I'll work really hard all of the rest of the time. But there is that need. So for all of those people who think, all of those listeners who think that confidence equals hustle, it doesn't. It really doesn't.

Yeah. You and I can talk after this and we can create one for you. Your own self care menu. Oh, that's brilliant, Jack. I think let's have a break now. And when we come back, I'm really interested in talking about the neurodivergence part of your life and what you're doing in that space. And that would be great to talk about. Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Today I am talking to Jack Chambers-Ward, and we're talking all about the male perspective on confidence. So, Jack, we hear the term impostor syndrome and confidence a lot. Tell me, how does neurodivergence, or often undiagnosed neurodivergence, play a role in?

But that's a lot of pressure, isn't it? That's a lot for you to be thinking about. And that in itself can feel quite heavy. Does it feel heavy to you?

Yeah, definitely. There's a thing I was talking to my wife about a little while ago, and I think it was something I hadn't realized. I was kind of subconsciously doing it. I mentioned I'm a cis white man, straight man. So I'm ticking all the boxes of privilege, basically, apart from being from an incredibly rich family, unfortunately. But there is that element. I'm also a physically large person. I am six foot two. I am nigh on 20 stone. Like I'm a physically large person. And as anyone who has seen the pictures of me, Sarah and Tazmin, from the podcast, you can see I am much, much bigger than you two. And there is an element there that comes with I am going to be an intimidating presence to people, whether I like it or not. Being a physically large, especially white man in certain circumstances, the fact, know you, Tazmin, being a woman of color who is a foot shorter than me, and I don't mean that as a dig, just as a fact, a large guy approaching you when you're not feeling comfortable. And again, not speaking for women here or people of other genders, but that can be a pretty intimidating process. And I've realized I've kind of been going out of my way to be as unintimidating as possible and trying to be as friendly as possible. Despite my size, despite my appearance, I try to be a positive presence, a friendly presence. And I've to the point where even little things like, oh, I'll be walking home late, I'll get off the bus and be the only two people walking on this street will be me and another person. The other person is a woman. I'm like, well, this could make this very uncomfortable for her. So I'm going to hang back or walk a slightly different route and let her go off on her own rather than me. I could rush home and I could be right next to her or, like following right behind her or anything like that, but that can be quite an unpleasant experience. Again, speaking to my female friends, speaking to my wife, speaking to. I have two sisters as well, which is probably a big influence on this as well. Trying to not be this coming back around to the confidence and arrogance thing, like this big. I am the center of attention, man, and trying to accommodate people and realize some people don't want that. Whether that's out in the street, on a bus, on a train, at a conference, in the workplace, whatever it is, having that element where I'm trying to kind of minimize myself in a positive way, not to make myself feel smaller, make myself feel worse, but to make myself a less intimidating presence, I think is something I really had been doing subconsciously and now kind of am actually conscious of it.

And there's a big part of awareness, or you could call it emotional intelligence in that, that you understand what impact you may have. I think the more people are open and honest in conversations with each other and be able to speak what is right for them, because I also remember last Brighton, you and I were at a dinner together and we'd been invited, but we were both quite tired. And remember we spoke and said, do you just want to sit here and eat our pizza in peace or have we got energy for a conversation? And you said, no, let's chat. And I think that was the first time you and I had a really in depth conversation about ADHD. We were talking about my recent trip to hudge, and it was a very rich conversation. I felt it was very rich conversation.

We went into our family backstories and all kinds of stuff. Yeah, absolutely.

And it's something that I've learned with my daughter because she's had some diagnosis, but it's very honest in a non raw form. So if she comes to me with mom, this happened, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'll ask her, who do you want me to be right now? And she'll say, I just want you to be mum and just listen and give me a hug if I need it or whatever. Or she'll say, I need you to coach me through this. I need to find a solution. Don't want you to find it for me. I just want you to ask me questions. So normalizing those sorts of conversations with your friends, with your siblings, with your children, with your manager, I feel that can only help improving relationships, be it personal or work wise. I'm interested in understanding from you. Like we're saying, emotional intelligence, more and more important these days, especially working with teams of neurodivergent members. What are your thoughts on the ability of, because most managers leadership is male orientated on emotional intelligence, or even perhaps lack of emotional intelligence of men in.

Those situations, I think lack of is almost the key word there to steal a phrase from SEO. That is something I think I'm really, again, conscious of trying to be more aware of and trying to be conscious of whether that's in the workplace. Like you said, working with, not to call people out, but other members at Candour or other team members are also neurodivergent. We have a neurodivergent employee resource group at Candour where we can all kind of come together and have conversations like, oh, I really struggle with this, or do you think we could use this kind of software or do this thing or, oh, have you tried this thing? Or whatever? Having those open conversations has been a really nice process for the half dozen of us at the company that are going through similar things. Again, not all necessarily diagnosed with the same thing or even fully diagnosed necessarily, but being able to have that open conversation about the struggles and all that kind of stuff is a really powerful thing. And I think that is a massive problem with so many men and our conversations that we have. There's a kind of running joke, right, where a group of women will get together, group of girlfriends, and they'll hang out and they will have the most in depth, incredible conversation, and they'll break down everything. And then the very stereotypical kind of group of guys will hang out. And the question comes was like, oh, wow, you spent, like, all evening with the guys. What did you guys speak about? Nothing, really. You mentioned the in depth conversation you and I had, Tazmin. There's often no depth to that, and that is very much a barrier I think is put up by coming back around to things like toxic masculinity. The emotional intelligence is always trying to force its way through that barrier and push through and say, actually, if we understand our own emotions and how we can be empathetic to other people and be understanding of other people, that is a hugely important thing in life. You mentioned your relationship with the daughter there. I talk about similar relationship with my mum or relationship with my wife as well, like, understanding and having that. Who do you need right now? Because, again, coming around to the ADHD side of things, I'm a problem solver. If there is an issue, I instantly want to go, okay, how do we solve the problem? And sometimes, exactly as you said, Tazmin, you just need a. Just listen to me rant for a bit and be a shoulder to cry on or hold your pants up and punch them or whatever you need. Like, just get some stress out, whatever it is. You don't necessarily need to go into problem solving mode. And actually, that can be frustrating for the other person. They're like, I don't need a solution. I can handle this. I just need a place to vent and reset my energy and kind of make myself feel better. And I think some people can find that quite difficult to come to terms with. And it comes down to communication at the end of the day. There's something I talk about so often with my friends who have been married longer than I have. Like I said, we're married for coming up on two years now. It'll be two years in April. But so many of my friends have been married longer than Emma and I have, and us having those conversations and, oh, did you struggle with this? Or when we bought our house last year? What was this struggle and these big life decisions? You can have those big in depth conversations, but also have fun and have easy, normal conversations. It doesn't have to be all one or the other. And I think I'm kind of, like, trying to find that balance where I will be joking and talking about tv shows or video games or whatever with my guy friends, and then, oh, somebody's going through a breakup now we need to switch and be like, we need to be serious. We need to be there for them. We need to give them real advice. And a friend of mine did go through a breakup a few weeks ago, and he came to me, and it was Emma and I having that conversation with him and going through that process, and it was the most vulnerable we've known each other for ten plus years, by far, the most vulnerable we've ever, ever been with each other. And it was suddenly like this wave of emotional opening and awakening that happened with us where we're just like, oh, wow, I didn't realize you felt that way, or I didn't realize you were even going through that in your relationship and all this kind of stuff. And I think it is such a classic element of male friendship and male companionship where we just don't really talk about stuff, let alone try and relate to women, non binary people, other people of different diverse backgrounds and all that kind of stuff. That is a whole other element to it. And I would really recommend, and not to plug my own podcast here, but I did an episode with Petra Kish Hershegg, and Petra is literally doing a phd on psychology about emotional intelligence and stuff. So they were absolutely amazing. Brilliant, brilliant guest. If you go and back and listen to that episode of Search with Candour, Petra can put it much better than definitely, she's incredible, she's brilliant. And having that barrier where I think that toxic masculinity thing we've been talking about the whole episode, the hustle culture, all this kind of stuff comes back around to, I think men can kind of get, we can kind of get stuck in our own kind of like comfortable bubble of patriarchal structures and male focused structures and stuff and not worry about a lot of the stuff we probably should be thinking about and actually having open, honest conversations about confidence, emotional intelligence, all this kind of stuff. Hopefully we're moving in the right direction. I know I'm in a little bit of a liberal echo chamber of my friends, but I would like to think I'm moving in the right direction as a whole.

I think openness, self awareness, confident communication. I saw this thing on Instagram. Husband's telling his wife, why do you go walking with your friends? Why don't you go jogging instead? And she said, but we're not just walking. We're walking and talking. And he said, well, what's the point of that? And she said, we're not just walking, we're saving lives, right? This morning we saved yours because she was cross at him about something. But we've talked about a lot of topics today. We've talked about confidence and hustle culture and neurodivergency and emotional intelligence. So this question is going to be difficult, I think, to answer, but maybe not. What would you like the listeners to take away from today's episode?

Don't get caught up in the hustle culture. I think it's the key because like I said, you can so easily watch stuff on YouTube or TikTok or listen to a podcast or be on LinkedIn and see everyone making, or at least claiming that's probably a key part of as well, claiming to make lots of money and all this kind of stuff. Really do your research. Understand who you're following, who you're listening to, and don't get caught up in all the charlatans and all the bad stuff that comes with that side of the industry.

That's good advice. Good advice. Now, another piece of advice. So this podcast is to help people with their careers through a range of topics. What's the best career advice you've ever received?

I think it was, funnily enough, the director at Candour, Mark Williams Cook, my co-host on the podcast, as really, really smart guy. And when it comes to SEO, he always talks about how whatever you do from an SEO perspective shouldn't affect the user in a negative way. And I kind of twisted that in a slightly different way of like, whatever changes you're making in your career. And Mark and I would talk about this because I left a fairly toxic work culture to come to Canada, and that was I was offered a lot more money by the other company. They essentially doubled my salary. Between me saying, oh, by the way, I'm thinking about leaving to handing in my notice, my salary essentially doubled in like 48 hours over like half a dozen conversations with my boss at the time who was the owner of the company. He was like, oh, how much money would I have to pay you to stay? And I'm like, you're kind of missing the point here. So not doing something in your career that will negatively affect your work life balance, your mental health, all the stuff we've been talking about in the episode, maybe you could make a bit more money here. And if that is your goal, then godspeed, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, don't make a jump to a career or a company if you think it will negatively affect your life as a whole.

Incredible advice and links in with so much of what we talked about today.

Yeah.

And the third of our wrap up questions, who is someone who inspires you that you would recommend following?

That's brilliant. If you give some links, we'll put those in the show notes so everyone has a chance to follow him. This has been quite an episode. We've covered so much personal stories as well. It's been brilliant. So thank you so much, Jack, and thank you to all listeners today. I'm sure you've enjoyed it. It's been brilliant. Thank you.

Thank you for having me on. Tazmin. It's been really fun. Like I said, it's always nice to chat with you, but it's nice to have a one on one and kind of get deep and emotional and get into some deep, deep, interesting, pretty hot topics. So yeah, always fun to do that. Thanks so much for having me on.

It's been great. It's been great. And thank you again to everyone listening. And a reminder that if you are enjoying what Sarah and I are doing and would like to support the podcast, then variety of ways of doing that one is via the buy me a coffee, the link is in the show notes. And please share the podcast with anyone and everyone that you think would be beneficial that would benefit. Thank you again. Take care everyone.