IAM1152- Podcast Host Teaches Emotional Intelligence

Noble is the person you'd least expect to be talking about feelings & emotions! This West Point grad & former Infantry Officer in the US Army is now an EQ Practitioner and teaches Emotional Intelligence on his podcast, EQ for Entrepreneurs.

Don't let the big beard & tattoos fool you – Noble is pure positive energy & passion! He brings 23 years of experience as an entrepreneur and international keynote speaker to help corporate clients, entrepreneurs, leaders & influencers get their emotions working for them, not against them.

• CEO Hack: Mood Meter App
• CEO Nugget: (i) If you don't deal with your emotional issues, your children, company, and family will (ii) Unaddressed emotional issues don't get better, they actually compound (iii) Emotional healthy people help heal other people emotionally
• CEO Defined: Somebody who takes ownership of their gifts, skills, talents, and abilities to bear and provide a lifestyle for themselves and other people

Website: https://www.eqforentrepreneurs.com/training

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eq-for-entrepreneurs/id1497445408
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eqforentrepreneurs/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWJkBGvkfH_BxHahuM8hTcw

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Transcription

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00:16 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:44 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Noble Givens of EQ Gangster. Noble, it's great to have you on the show.

00:54 – Noble Gibbens

Big G, I'm stoked man, I'm ready.

00:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, definitely excited as well too. I love the energy and I love all the awesome things that you're doing. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Noble so you can hear why he's so stoked and hear about all those awesome things that he's doing. Noble is the person you'd least expect to be talking about feelings and emotions. This West Point grad and former infantry officer in the US Army is now an EQ practitioner and teaches emotional intelligence on his podcast EQ for Gangsters.

Don't let the big beard and tattoos fool you. Noble is pure positive energy and as you can tell, passion. He brings 23 years of experience as an entrepreneur and international keynote speaker to help corporate clients, entrepreneurs, leaders, and influencers get their emotions working for them, not against them. It's EQ gangster, right? For the podcast. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Noble, super excited to have you on and ready to speak to the I AM CEO community.

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01:51 – Noble Gibbens

Ready Big Gene, I'm ready, man, I'm ready.

01:54 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here's a bit more about how you got started, essentially your origin CEO story.

02:02 – Noble Gibbens

Alright, so I started out real quickly, emotionally clueless my whole life. The way we handle conflict in our house, my mom's a 4 foot 10 little Hispanic lady. My dad was a big giant white guy. So I look like my dad, but I can Abla. So I could break it down a little bit. So, we grew up with no conflict where it's Lucian's skills. I learned how to stuff and avoid my emotions very, very early on which led into, you know, ranger school at West Point. Didn't learn about feelings and emotions at West Point, didn't learn about it. Ranger school or the 82nd airborne division.

Then I was a serial entrepreneur and started my entrepreneurial journey with a network marketing business. Actually is where I kind of cut my teeth on business, made 7 figures, through a network marketing business, replaced my wife's income at 27, and replaced my income at 30 years old, so financially independent at 30 years old. That really gave me a, like the bug, the business bug. I'm like, man, This is amazing, I love business. So from there started 2 medical imaging centers with a couple of my buddies. The first one failed, the second one we sold, you know, a handful of years ago.

From there went into executive coaching, started a business called Adventure Leadership Business, and then did a government contracting business, working with special operations soldiers. You know, using their skills I was the business guy they did all the cool guy stuff from there. A number of other businesses, and most recently our EQ business, our EQ Gangster podcast, and our business where we teach emotional intelligence.

03:41 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, well, I definitely appreciate you sharing it. Love to hear about your journey and how, and the way that you guys take everything you're doing now. I appreciate you being open and talking about that emotion and peace. Cause I think for the first time we connected as well too, it's something that's not talked about a lot. So I appreciate you being transparent to let us know that we're not alone in some time, not being able to kind of face and maybe even know how to deal with some of those emotions.

04:04 – Noble Gibbens

100% Gresham. I tell you, so many entrepreneurs, I call it the entrepreneurial roller coaster. But that's another great book I recommend by Darren Hardy, the entrepreneur roller coaster. A lot of folks, a lot of entrepreneurs, There's no 2 days of being an entrepreneur is the same. There are emotions associated with every peak and valley an entrepreneur experiences, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or over decades of being in business.

So I feel, I guess what happened for me, the healthier I got emotionally, I started to make different business decisions, financial decisions, family decisions, faith decisions. My whole world started to change the healthier I got emotionally. So that's what even led us to start our podcast. I'm like, babe, I can't be the only emotionally clueless guy out there. There's gotta be other nobles out there, other emotionally clueless entrepreneurs out there that need to hear some of this stuff. So that's kind of how we got it going.

05:03 – Gresham Harkless

I know you touched on it a little bit in like how you work with your clients. I know you mentioned the coaching, the training, and of course the podcast. Are there any other additional ways or anything you wanted to add related to how you serve the clients you work with?

05:14 – Noble Gibbens

Yeah, that's a great question. So the other thing too that we have got because, for a lot of people, this is a new space. Now, there is a percentage of the population that they're very well deep into their emotional growth journey, a very intentional emotional fitness program. Most people are not based on what I have found.

So the other thing we've created is a membership group to help people work on this kind of uncomfortable area for a lot of people and a new area for a lot of people in a safe, encouraging, supportive environment. That is, our website to get to that is EQGangster.com forward slash mafia. That's our EQ mafia our membership group for folks who work together with tons of content in there. Then also once and twice a month, I go live in the group with a group coaching session to kind of help people work on specific things each month.

06:12 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself personally, the business, or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:22 – Noble Gibbens

So that's a great question. I would say this is that, is that now as a, you know, 2 and a half decade, entrepreneur 20, you know, I've been on for 24 years and almost 25 years now. Now, finally, I have an intentional emotional fitness program, an intentional emotional growth plan, and a program that I have for myself. Listen, I've only been on this journey for 4 or 5 years. Thankfully we've turned into a business that's helping other people also, but don't get it twisted.

I am continuously growing alongside my EQ mafia peers in this group because I am still working on myself. I got tons of junk in my trunk, which I'm still working on. You know what I'm saying? So for me, that's what I would say that makes me unique, especially as an entrepreneur, is that in addition to our businesses and all this kind of stuff, I have an emotional fitness program that I work on on a regular basis.

07:22 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that, Noble. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

07:35 – Noble Gibbens

Excellent. So this is, this is one of the things I use with, with the majority of my coaching clients and it's called the mood meter app, mood meter app. It's 99 cents on the app store. I'm not a part of it. I don't have a piece of the juice. It's not my product, but I use it regularly and recommend it to the folks I'm working with because it helps with two things. It helped, and I've got actually one of my podcast episodes I have, I explain the benefits of this app.

It helps you grow, not only your self-awareness but also starts working on some self-management stuff. Because you don't want one or you don't want self-awareness with no self-management. They've actually done research that's actually harmful because now you're aware of all the stuff but now you don't have any tools to manage it. That's not good. I think there's a lot of the younger generation that may find themselves in that situation. I'm aware of all my emotions and stuff but I got no idea what to do with them.

You want to grow both your self-awareness and your self-management and that's why I like that mood meter app that you can use on a daily basis to kind of check in with yourself a few times a day. I recommend people the easiest way to start a new habit, attach it to a habit you've already got. So you can say, okay, I normally eat 2 or 3 times a day. Then you just say, okay, before I eat, let me just check in real quick with my mood meter app and literally it takes 30 seconds. 30 seconds, check in with yourself, boom. Then it asks you how you're feeling, but then it asks you why you're feeling what you're feeling. So that is a great tool that I recommend, my good CEO hack that I'd recommend.

09:19 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine or something you might tell a client as well.

09:32 – Noble Gibbens

If you don't deal with your emotional issues, your children will. If you don't deal with your emotional issues, your family, friends, colleagues, and company will. So that's my nugget followed by maybe 2 other nuggets real quick. Another one is unaddressed emotional issues don't get better over time. They actually compound. Unaddressed emotional issues don't get better over time. They actually compound. On a positive note, emotionally healthy people help heal other people emotionally.

10:15 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show, so Noble, what does being a CEO mean to you?

10:28 – Noble Gibbens

My definition of a CEO is somebody who takes ownership of their gifts, skills, talents, and abilities and brings them to bear on the marketplace in the best way that they possibly can that provides a lifestyle both for themselves and hopefully for other people.

10:56 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. I love that definition and just the way, especially that ownership word, because we're not talking about owning, you know, necessarily a bit, you're owning your gifts, your talents, the things that you've been given in order to make an impact and they manifest themselves in a business, they manifest themselves in relationships, manifest themselves in so many different ways. So I love how, you know, that plants a seed, but that seed grows on how we cultivate it, how we give it enough light and all of those things so that we can see it come to fruition and make a true impact.

11:23 – Noble Gibbens

I think too, Gretchen, that we have, and I love what you said, a responsibility to bring our gifts to bear. In fact, that's one of my tattoos. I know those y'all that are hearing this on the podcast, I'm not able to see this, but I have a present gift on my hand that's on fire. Then I have some numbers on my knuckles in Second Timothy 1, 6, and 7, which says fan into flame, the gifts that you have been given by God, for we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power of love and a sound mind. So I feel like we have a responsibility to bring the gifts that we have been given and that we have developed to the world to make the world a better place.

12:11 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. Amen. I will be strong and courageous for the Lord of my God is with me where so ever I may go. Absolutely love that. Noble, truly appreciate you again for taking some time out. What I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. Of course, how best they can get ahold of you. Find out about the Mafia podcast and all the awesome things you're working on.

12:32 – Noble Gibbens

Thank you, Gresham. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. You have added value to my life during this time together. I really appreciate that. Thank you for all that you're doing for all the entrepreneurs and business owners out there, The folks that want to get into business become an entrepreneur.

Thank you for all that you're doing. So the thing that I would like to leave folks is I just really want to encourage you that you are worth the time, investment, energy, and effort to become the best version of yourself so that you can bring the best version of your business to bear to the world, to make the world a better place. Where folks can find me, EQgangster.com In there, there's a tab for podcasts.

You can see all our podcast episodes or on all the platforms, you can find us at EQgangster. If you want to be a part of our community and our membership have a group to help you grow, to grow alongside you with your own emotional growth journey and your own emotional fitness program. You can find us at EQGangster.com forward slash mafia.

13:40 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Noble. We will have the links and information and the show notes as well. Thank you so much for bringing light to my life and everybody who's listening and, you know, taking part in all the awesome things that you've been able to do and build. Appreciate you so much, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

13:56 – Outro