In this week’s episode of The Sensitive CEO Show, I have the pleasure of talking with Jemma Broadstock. We discuss how vulnerability is celebrated, and sensitivity is hailed as a superpower. Join us as we explore the transformative journey from vulnerabilities to victories, and learn how embracing sensitivity can unlock hidden potential and pave the way for extraordinary success.
Through this thought-provoking conversation, we’ll delve into the ways sensitivity can be harnessed as a superpower in the business world. So, whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or simply someone who wants to celebrate the beauty of sensitivity, this episode is a must-listen.
Get ready to be inspired, empowered, and armed with the tools to create a truly remarkable journey of your own.
Jemma is a seasoned business coach and mentor who brings a unique blend of expertise in psychology and entrepreneurial experience to the table. With a Master’s degree in Psychology and a wealth of knowledge gained from working closely with numerous business owners, Jemma has honed her skills in guiding others towards success.
Having started her own business at the young age of 16, Jemma understands the challenges and triumphs that come with building and scaling a venture. Her entrepreneurial journey led her to establish a successful virtual assistant agency, equipping her with firsthand knowledge of the intricacies involved in running a business.
Jemma’s true passion lies in empowering fellow entrepreneurs to realise their dreams and live their best lives. By providing unwavering support and guidance, she helps her clients transform their businesses into thriving enterprises that align with their personal visions.
What sets Jemma apart is her holistic approach, blending strategic methodologies with her deep understanding of psychology. By delving into the underlying mindset and emotional dynamics, she empowers her clients to make impactful shifts and embrace transformative growth.
Jemma’s own pursuit of an extraordinary life led her to relocate to the beach with her boyfriend—a testament to her belief that business success and personal fulfilment can harmoniously coexist. With her infectious enthusiasm and unwavering commitment to living her best life, Jemma is dedicated to helping fellow business owners achieve the same level of fulfilment and freedom.
💝 Key Takeaways
- Embracing your uniqueness: Finding your voice and personal power to stand out in the business world.
- Building an extraordinary life: Balancing business success with personal fulfillment and designing the lifestyle you desire.
- Nurturing a growth mindset: How to cultivate resilience, adaptability, and a positive perspective on the entrepreneurial journey.
🔗 Where You Can Find Jemma
- Website: http://theultimateceo.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jemmabroadstock and https://www.instagram.com/theultimateceo
- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theultimateceocommunity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jemmabroadstock/
- Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/11P1UWmLxlNzu3AMP2kPxa?si=e0b26b5ffc0e4e1f
🌹 Rose’s Resources
📖 (Imperfect) Transcript
We use Descript to provide this transcript which isn’t always perfect but wonderful all the same. (affiliate link 😃)
Rose: Hey, it’s Rose and welcome to another episode of the Sensitive CEO Show. And in this week’s episode, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Jemma Broadstock. Welcome, Jemma. And before we dive into your topic today, I would love for you to share a bit about your background and how you came to do what you do today.
Jemma: Of course. Well, thank you so much for having me. So I started freelancing back when I was 16. So I’ve been in this online space for quite a long time, but I actually went down the psychology route. So I got my degree and my master’s thinking I was gonna get into psychology, and then I was made redundant in 2018 and figured why not try and do this freelancing thing full time?
And that began my virtual assistant agency, that was something that I grew to six figures and then I was like, this is just not what I’m meant to be doing. So back when I was at uni, I’d got into mentoring and coaching and I just thought, you know, that was the work that I remember really lighting me up and making me feel really fulfilled.
So what if I were to get back into that? So in 2020 I kind of came full circle, started offering mentoring and coaching to online business owners, and that is what I’ve continued doing since, and I just, I love it so much, it makes me so happy.
Rose: Oh, brilliant. And I can hear the happiness and the fulfillment in your voice as you are sharing that with us.
Jemma: Yeah. Honestly, it’s one of those things that I really do wake up every morning and think, this is my life. This is, so, this is just everything that, you know, 18 year old me would’ve wanted.
Rose: Oh, that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. And I love our topic today. It’s, from vulnerabilities to victories, embracing sensitivity as a superpower in business.
So the first question I wanted to ask you today, Jemma, in the business world there. As you know, there can be a lot of pressure to conform and suppress our unique qualities. How can sensitivity be harnessed as a superpower? Allowing individuals to find their voice and stand out in their respective fields.
Jemma: I think this is something that. It’s definitely easier said than done, and it’s not something that I’ve always been able to do.
I definitely used to look around at other people in the online space and think, you know, they’re louder than me, more confident than me. They just seem more fearless than me. And I think there’s just a lot of people who behaved in a way that was so different from me that it made me question, do I belong here?
Can I do this too? And it took me a while for me to realize that actually those things that I was thinking, you know, I’m not enough because of these things were actually the things that were reasons that my clients were working with me so practically that was purely started by testimonials. You know, I was asking people, what was it about me that made you wanna work with me, and why was it such a great experience?
What did you get from it? And the feedback that was coming back consistently was. All of those things. It was the fact that I was, you know, very empathetic. The fact that I was very sensitive, that I didn’t look and behave like everybody else in the online space, that I wasn’t super confident and in your face.
And I realized actually that was the very reason that people wanted to work with me, and it was the thing I was trying to hide. So once I realized that it was much easier for me to embrace that and really bring my full self into this online space and care much less about, whether I was behaving like other people.
And that has continued to be the case. You know, every client that I assigned pretty much has said the same thing. You know, I talk a lot about my anxiety online and I get a lot of anxious clients who feel like they really resonate and they know I’m gonna understand them. So I think it’s just really leaning into the fact that.
When there are so many people offering similar services, the thing that’s gonna set us apart is us. And it’s our personality and our unique way of communicating and all that kind of stuff. And so the more you can really lean into you, the more likely you are to find clients who are your people. And I think for me it was feedback that really solidified that.
Rose: I love that. And I think it’s even more important today when AI is such a big thing and a lot of people are using ai, but they’re losing their own authentic voice and it, yeah. I think having your own vulnerability and authenticity to share with people, they can really pick up on that energy, whether it’s real or not.
Jemma: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I’ve been doing some market research this week, and that’s something that has come up. People saying that they can really see through a lot of people’s content, where it looks like it could have been copy and pasted from anyone’s profile. And actually that people are really craving that authentic, genuine connection, even if that means it’s less perfect or it’s got a spelling mistake in, or it shows that things are not always like, you know, happy. I think people are really craving that over something that looks perfect, that they can’t really relate to.
Rose: Yeah, definitely, definitely. So balancing business success and personal fulfillment is often seen as a challenge. As, as I know, you know, Jemma. I’d love you to share some insights or strategies for finding the equilibrium and designing an extraordinary life that really aligns with one’s values and desires.
Jemma: So for me, the first part of this was really being honest with myself and realizing that I wasn’t there. So with the first business I had, it was, I guess, successful from the outside. You know, it had a lot of the things that people see as successful. I had followers, I had people engaging with me. The money was coming in.
And I had to really just sit with myself and, and be honest about the fact that while that was happening, I also was not feeling good about it. And that was something that I felt like I really had to hide because I was quite ashamed of the fact that I had built that. I had built something that didn’t make me happy.
But yeah, the first thing was getting honest about the fact that this wasn’t what I wanted, and really acknowledging the fact that what I did want was something that was on a completely different path. And then the second part of that was mapping out that path and being able to see, okay, if this is the life that I want, this is what I want my day to look like, these are the kind of people that I wanna work with.
Working back from that, what do I need to be offering? What do my services need to look like? What does the kind of setup does my office need to look like? Effectively just starting again and being okay with that, and just remembering that I would rather start again now and get to where I wanna go at some point, rather than stay where I was and just be on this completely different path that’s never gonna get me there.
Rose: And that is so brave. I know a lot of people stand their businesses because they’ve done it for so long and there is an income coming in, so that’s so brave of you, Jemma, and I’d love to know if. If it was a quick decision that you made when you pivoted or did it take you a while to come to that decision?
Jemma: I wish I could say it was a quick decision. It took me about a year, honestly, of me feeling like something isn’t right here. Something needs to change. But just kind of putting that feeling off. And then it was a couple of months of just really feeling a bit rubbish before I actually made the decision.
And I really feel like it was one of those where, because it was taking me so long, the universe was deciding for me because I started to have clients drop off. I started to have people just sort of saying it was the right time to finish up and it felt like everything was coming to an end, whether I liked it or not, because I knew I didn’t wanna take on new clients and if my current clients were dropping off at some point, I wasn’t gonna have a business anyway.
So, it really felt like I was kind of pushed into that decision, but it was what I needed because I think I just would’ve sat with it forever. and I think I was starting to almost destroy it from the inside because I knew it wasn’t what I wanted, but I felt so. I felt so torn because I think it was so tied to my identity that I didn’t know how to let that business go without losing my entire self with it.
Rose: Wow. I love that. It sounds like your higher self was giving you a very good nudge in the right direction.
Jemma: Yes, definitely. And I needed it.
Rose: So I wanna talk about growth mindset. I know that it’s really important as an entrepreneur, but it can sometimes be tested during challenging times. How can we cultivate resilience and positive perspectives to navigate the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey?
Jemma: So I think the growth mindset is one of those things that is so much easier to talk about when you’re in a good head space, but very, very difficult to implement when you are in the middle of something.
And I think the first part is forgiveness. So when you are in something and you are feeling like, Ugh, this is not how I wanted to navigate this. You know, I told myself I wouldn’t spiral this time, or I told myself I wouldn’t do this again. The first part is just forgiving yourself for being human, because that is just part of it.
And without that humanness, I don’t think we would have such successful businesses because that’s necessary. So the first part is just allowing yourself to feel and to not get it perfect and not get it right. We’re all always working through something. and then the next part is just to sit with yourself and really have that time to look at, okay, on reflection.
What happened there? What was it that triggered me? Why was it that this pattern came up again? Was I scrolling social media or was it because I had a difficult conversation with a client? was it because I was having a bad day personally? I’m really just trying to pick apart what happened in the same way that you would look at your data on social media and look at, okay, what happened, what worked, what didn’t.
I do that with, you know, experiences in the business as well, and I think that’s really helpful for me to just look back and be like, okay, what did, what did I do well there? And what would I do differently going forwards? Because we all know that a growth mindset is gonna help us in lots of different ways.
It helps us to try new things and not see failures as a bad thing and be open to learning and be wrong. but the reality is those are also really hard things, especially in business when people are looking at you as somebody who is an expert who maybe doesn’t get things wrong. So I think it’s just allowing yourself to be human, but also knowing that you’ve gotta do the work.
And so if you rush through everything and you never look back and you never stop to think it’s gonna be really hard to overcome those things or get better at doing them in the future. Whereas if you slow down sometimes, I think that’s exactly what you need to look at, how you can get through things quicker in future.
So for example, with closing down my business, that was a huge fear of failure. To me, that’s a real fixed mindset way of looking at things. Because I tied everything to that and thought that if it didn’t work, that was the end of the world. But coming out of that, I made a deal with myself that I would make decisions in future in 24 hours because I didn’t wanna get stuck in that again.
And I’ve stuck to that. But that came from me messing up in the first place and doing something that made my life harder. And then me taking the time to sit and really reflect on that and deciding what I was gonna do going forwards.
Rose: I love that. That’s such good advice. And I, I love that you’ve given yourself the goal of 24 hours. That’s, Probably makes life a lot easier in the long run for you.
Jemma: It really does. It stops the overthinking and it just reminds me that no decision in the business is really that big of a deal. And obviously there are certain decisions that might need a little bit longer, but I’ve never since that needed more than 24 hours and every decision has always worked out fine.
And so that’s allowed me to build up this proof that I can make decisions, I can make quick decisions, and it is gonna be okay. So it feels less scary now.
Rose: Brilliant. I would love for you to share a personal experience or an inspiring story of a client, someone you’ve worked with, who has embraced their sensitivity and turned it into a superpower.
Jemma: Okay, so the one that really stands out to me is one of my really long-term clients, and when she first came to me, she was like, I need to work on my prices. I need to look at my strategy. You know, it’s very strategic stuff. And we did that. We did that in the first couple of weeks, but then it very quickly moved onto, how can I be more me?
How can I really embrace myself in and outside of my business? How can I do things in a way that allows me to be seen for who I really am and accepted for who I am. And it has been such a beautiful journey with her. You know, we’ve met in person, we’ve worked together for a year, and it’s just been a real journey of her embracing all of these parts of herself that she hasn’t shared with people for a really long time. You know, some of these things that she’s talking about, she hasn’t even acknowledged since she was a kid. And I think she has just as we all do, we grow up, we suppress these parts of ourselves. We think this bit is the bit the world wants to see. This bit is the bit that’s too much for people and we become this version of adulthood and it’s like, oh, this is, this is not really the full me.
And it’s just been this journey of her allowing herself day by day to be a bit more her. And it’s just been so nice to see because not only has it had such a positive impact on her business and she’s been putting offers out there that is so unique and that her people love because they’ve never seen it before, but it’s had such a knock on impact on her life where she went out the weekend to a concert and things. She’s not done in such a long time and she’s really embracing her hobbies that she’d hidden away for a long time. And it’s just been such a nice experience. And it’s also been a reminder that as things get easier, in some ways, there will always be challenges, right?
So as you embrace your true self, that’s a really beautiful thing to do and it feels really good for the most part. But it also brings with it new challenges of things to face where perhaps the people around you don’t recognize you anymore or you are dealing with. You know, a power shift in your friendships and things like that. And so it’s just been a really, really beautiful journey to be on with her.
Rose: Oh, I bet. And how fulfilling to have a client, like for you to watch her to grow and to have a client that you see so much change and over the 12 months you work together.
Jemma: Yeah, and it’s really, it’s just, it makes me so glad that I made that decision, you know, because when I was running that previous business, I did question.
Is this just what business is like? Is business just meant to be hard and difficult and not that fun? Is that just how it’s, and I really believed that there was a world where I could have all these clients who I genuinely looked forward to meeting and loved working with, and that, you know, our calls were full of laughter and sometimes tears and breakthroughs, and that really is what I have now.
So I look back and almost wish I could tell that version of myself, like just close the business because there’s something amazing on the other side of this.
Rose: Well, maybe it was you going back, you know, you were the highest self going back to your younger you and giving you the nudge that you needed back then.
Jemma: Maybe, maybe, maybe it was.
Rose: What are some lessons that you’ve learned through this client and probably many other clients that could possibly help others listening today on their journey?
Jemma: I think vulnerability. It’s been really important because like I said, it’s the reason a lot of clients work with me.
It’s the reason a lot of people feel they can trust me, and a lot of that has come from me opening up first, me being very honest about my journey and my struggles and the things that haven’t worked because I feel like that really builds the start of a relationship where people feel they can be honest too.
And I think that’s been really amazing in the community that I’ve built. But also it means that when my clients come to me, they are very open about what’s going on. And you know, I’m someone who’s worked with coaches before and I’ve been in situations sometimes where I think this person is so perfect.
I dunno if I can tell them my problems because I almost feel like I need to be perfect. so it’s really, I really do value the fact that people come to me and they can be so open. and I also think. Something that I hear a lot from my clients is the fact that I do things differently sometimes, you know, I question the norms and don’t always stick to what’s been done before, and I don’t really care if that fails or not.
So if I try doing something in a new way that I’ve never seen done. Regardless of whether that goes well or not, I enjoy the experiment. I enjoy the fact that I tried it a new way to see if there was a better way. And I’ve found that the people in my circle have also really valued that because they get to see that they have the permission too, to say, I’m gonna do this differently.
And I think that’s been really, really powerful. And then ultimately just allowing myself to be me. Because in those moments where I have just been the me’est version of me, that is when I sign the most clients, it’s when I make the most money. It’s when I feel the happiest. It’s when I attract the most aligned people into my world.
And so that’s something that doesn’t come naturally to me because I feel like for my entire life, until I had a business, I very much hid that away. But the more I have lent into being myself, the more I feel like it’s given other people permission to do the same who are working with me.
Rose: And even people that are probably listening today and listening to your podcast and watching your social media posts, I’m sure that it really helps them to share your vulnerability.
Jemma: I hope so. I think, you know, if I could give one piece of business advice or, or even life advice in general, it really is just be more you. Cause I think everything else comes from that. You give yourself permission to try new things and to create your content in a different way, and it just shifts the way that you do business.
Rose: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, before we wrap up today, Jemma, I love everything that you’ve shared, and I know that the audience are going to have a lot to take away from this, but I would love you to share when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Jemma: For me, it’s definitely move. I’m someone who can really sit with my thoughts to the point of a spiral that I can’t get out of.
So for me, it’s definitely get up move. If that means going for a walk until I’ve kind of shifted it, if it means, getting up and having a dance because it’s raining outside, it just really is get out of my head into my body because that always allows me to pass through the worst of it. And then I can look back with a clearer mind and figure out, okay, what do I need to do?
How to move forward. But yes, it’s definitely a movement.
Rose: Brilliant. Well, where can people find you? I’ll pop all of your links in the show notes, but where would be the one place that you would like people to go to?
Jemma: Yeah, so on Instagram, I am Jemma Broadstock, and I also have an Instagram for my business, which is the ultimate c e o. So you can find me there.
Rose: Excellent. Well, thank you again Jemma, and thank you everyone for listening in today.
Jemma: Thank you so much.