Hey, I’m Dan, your Head Coach here at the English Confidence Gym.
But before anything else, I’m a non-native English speaker, just like you.
And the English Confidence Gym wasn’t created as a business idea.
It was born to solve a problem I lived personally.
The Problem: My Thoughts Were Bigger Than My English
I’ve always loved language.
My classical studies trained me to think with depth, precision, and nuance.
In Italian, I could express myself clearly and elegantly.
But in English? I felt limited.
It wasn’t my understanding (that part was great.)
It was my expression.
I couldn’t express myself with the same power.
My personality felt muted.
My ideas were sharp, but my delivery wasn’t.
And as a result, the English version of myself didn’t match the real me.
As a professional working internationally, the gap between what I knew and what I could say wasn’t just frustrating. It was unsustainable.
So I decided to engineer a solution.
The Turning Point: Solving It Like a Personal Development Engineer
My background is an unusual blend:
- Classical studies – mastery of structure, rhetoric, expression.
- UX design & WebXR development – system design, experiential flows, behavior loops.
- AI tool building – custom assistants, adaptive feedback, accelerated skill acquisition.
- Transformational coaching – helping people overcome fear, hesitation, and emotional blocks (supported by two ICF-recognised certifications.)
All of this led me to ask a question that changed everything:
“If I can express myself fully in my native language, why can’t I engineer a way to do it in English?”
So instead of treating English as a subject to learn, I treated confidence as a capabilityto engineer.
I built frameworks.
I tested loops.
I created “reps” for specific communication muscles.
This became the Weekly Flow, the Focus Areas, and the early versions of the custom GPT I built to support my practice, give myself instant feedback, and reduce hesitation.
And it worked.
My English confidence transformed systematically.
But then I discovered something crucial.
The Insight That Changed Everything
Practicing English with my custom GPT – or any AI app – can only take you so far.
It builds clarity.
It builds fluency.
It builds structure.
But it cannot prepare you for real human pressure.
That’s when:
- hesitation returns,
- fear of judgment appears,
- the stakes feel higher,
- your brain changes because someone else is watching you.
To build real confidence you need:
- human presence,
- real reactions,
- real pressure,
- unpredictability,
- the emotional weight of being seen.
And that’s when I realized something fundamental:
You can’t become fully confident by training alone.
Confidence is a relational skill, and humans develop real confidence in relation to other humans.
That’s why the English Confidence Gym couldn’t remain a solo system. It needed to become a community because confidence requires practice. And practice requires people.
This is how my personal method evolved into the English Confidence System.
The English Confidence System
The system is designed to train English confidence the way athletes train performance — and it rests on three pillars:
1. Daily Workouts & Shadowboxing
Where you strengthen your communication muscles every day.
2. Live Sparring
Where confidence becomes real, in real conversations and under real pressure.
3. Transformational Coaching
Where you dissolve the emotional and psychological blocks behind hesitation, perfectionism, and self-doubt.
This is why the English Confidence Gym isn’t just a “course.”
It’s a community based on a system, designed exactly the way human confidence develops:
- Alone (to develop skills.)
- Together (to develop confidence.)
- Supported (to develop identity.)
Why You Should Listen to Me
Not because I’m a native speaker. I’m not.
Not because I’m an English teacher. I’m not.
But because:
- I lived the exact problem you’re facing.
- I systematically engineered my way out of it.
- I combined classical language insight, UX and WebXR methodologies, custom AI tooling, and transformational coaching.
- I created a method that works in the real world, under real pressure.
- I tested it on myself, and it changed me.
Now this is a system YOU can use.
Why I Still Use This System
I built the English Confidence Gym because it’s the system I genuinely needed.
And the truth is: I still use it today.
Yes, I am the Head Coach because I designed the system, I guide the community, and I know how to support your transformational journey…
But I’m also a non-native English speaker who continues to train doing my daily workouts, shadowboxing, and joining live conversations.
Because confidence isn’t something we “achieve”. It’s something we maintain.