Join us today for Part 1 of the Interview with NLP specialist and coach Gemma Bailey...

This is Part 1 of the interview I had with Coach, NLP specialist, and business owner Gemma Bailey.  

In today’s interview with Gemma Bailey, I ask her about her journey from starting out to running 4 companies and a non-profit.  Gemma shares how her upbringing and personality affected her when finding her calling.  I also ask Gemma to talk about how there were cliff edge decisions and what she did to make the leap.

Join in on the Chat below.

Episode 1036: Invest in Yourself - Interview with NLP specialist and coach Gemma Bailey– Part 1

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1036 of the inspired stewardship

[00:00:05] Gemma Bailey: podcast. I'm Gemma Bailey. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world. You can do this by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your calling, having the ability to succeed.

[00:00:22] No matter what circumstances you find yourself in is key on one way to be inspired to do. Is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:35] confidence, breeds, confidence. If you can go at it with a confident attitude, it, to some extent, it feels like your brain unlocks a few extra resources for you to be more skilled at figuring things out and don't get me wrong. I've definitely have times in my life where I've had to, what I would call, [00:01:00] have a word with myself.

[00:01:01] Scott Maderer: Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself.

[00:01:20] Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:28] And today's interview with Jim a Bailey. I asked her about her journey from starting out to running four companies and a nonprofit Gemma shares how her upbringing and personality affected her when she was finding her calling. And I also asked Jemma to talk about how there were some cliff edge decisions and what she did to make the leap.

[00:01:50] One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're going to hear today is because of the past. In learning from others. Another great way to [00:02:00] learn from others is through reading books. But if you're like most people today, you find it hard to find the time to sit down and read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible.

[00:02:11] Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast.

[00:02:39] Gemma Bailey is the director of people building a personal and professional development company, specializing in NLP, training, hypnosis and coaching. She is the creator and franchisor for NLP, for kids, a company that teaches practitioners how to help children, families, and schools with mild to moderate [00:03:00] mental health issues.

[00:03:01] She owns a heist. Therapy company called the hypnotherapy in NLP clinic is an international speaker, an Arthur, a YouTuber, and a director for a nonprofit organization called superhero. Welcome to the show. Gemma,

[00:03:17] Gemma Bailey: thank you so much for having me. Jim you've had quite a journey over the years and now you're at this point of owning four companies working doing a nonprofit work.

[00:03:29] Scott Maderer: Can you share a little bit about the journey of getting here and how it's helped you develop? Resilience and all of that through that.

[00:03:41] Gemma Bailey: Yeah, of course. I would say firstly, this wasn't in the plan I didn't grow up thinking that I would ever be in a position of being a company owner.

[00:03:54] Really even a property owner, probably wasn't on my agenda. If I [00:04:00] think back to when I was of school age. So I think that from the very start, I probably had my expectations set quite low and some of that was by my own doing. And some of that was because of the environment that I grew up. I come from a working class family on both my mother's and my father's side, and really the expectation of the generation above me was that you would get a job.

[00:04:34] You would stay in that job. You would eventually. Have enough money to be able to rent from the council. So kind of state housing, and then eventually you would retire and that would be the way you would see out the rest of your days. So I am a black sheet. In my family to some extent, although some of my extended family have gone on to [00:05:00] stop businesses and do slightly more adventurous things.

[00:05:04] So it came with a great deal of insecurity. Both for me. And I think for the people around me that were invested in what my feature would look like. So I remember when I had been to college, I'd studied nursery nursing, which is looking after young children in a day nursery or kindergarten type setting.

[00:05:29] I'd worked my way up to nursery manager and that was deemed to be a very credible thing. So when I came home from work one day, having had months and months of huge amounts of stress that really made the job not seem all that worthwhile anymore. And I said to my mother. I am going to leave and I am going to start my own business.

[00:05:56] She, I think thought that I was having some kind of [00:06:00] psychological meltdown and was really concerned. And I remembered the conversation that I had with her. I had, by that stage already started training in. Self-development methodologies such as hypnotherapy and NLP, which is neuro-linguistic programming.

[00:06:17] It's sometimes thought of as an alternative to something like a cognitive behavior therapy. And I'd started to see few clients, but it wasn't my proper job yet. So when I came home from my nursery job one day and said to my. I'm going to Jack this in, and I'm going to start up a company where I am working as a hypnotherapist and helping people with their problems using NLP.

[00:06:45] She said to me I suppose if it all goes wrong, you can always go back to nursery nursing. And I said, yeah, but that's not really in the plan. The plan is that actually I am going to do this and I'm going to make it work and showing. [00:07:00] But what I'm saying is when it all goes wrong, you've got something to fall back on.

[00:07:05] And we went round in circles for a couple of minutes, having this conversation with her, trying to be reassuring, I think, but probably more so reassuring herself, the me, and do like to say that making that bold decision was a springboard to them. Reams of success that unfolded before my eyes from that point onwards.

[00:07:31] And it really wasn't. I had not really had any experience in business. I was managing a nursery, but. It wasn't really doing the backend management stuff. There was a company behind me there. I was more kind of customer facing and dealing with staff. I wasn't dealing with marketing.

[00:07:53] And I wasn't dealing with generating leads. That wasn't my area. [00:08:00] So to start up a business from scratch obviously requires quite a lot of those skills in order to. Grow and develop the business. And I went through really a good few years of quite a painful learning curve around that and working with different mentors and some of which was successful and took me to the next level.

[00:08:22] Some that I really just didn't take me on the next leg of my journey at all. I spent a long time, or I would say in both worlds where I was on one hand, starting up my business. But on the other hand, I was still relying on things like agency work and more traditional employment to fill the gap. The I really had from a financial perspective in the early days of my business.

[00:08:53] I noticed as well I noticed this now. I didn't notice it at the time, but now I can look back and see that. [00:09:00] When my business wasn't growing in the way that I wanted it to, rather than I guess, being smart about it and diagnosing what the problem was, I would start something. And this is maybe part of the reason why I've now ended up with several companies rather than just one really big one.

[00:09:23] But I would identify that there was another niche that I could work in or another area that I could expose. What I do to help those new groups of people develop themselves. And so then I would get distracted and then perhaps something I'd been working on previously that I, by that stage decided was unsuccessful actually.

[00:09:49] Could have been successful if my marketing skills had been better. And if I'd actually had a little bit more foundation around starting up a business, and these days I work with people [00:10:00] who are starting up their own businesses and quite often coming in, like I did from ground zero and really working their way up from.

[00:10:08] No experience in that area whatsoever. And I say to people, now you need to be coming at it either ready to invest money. Or ready to invest your time and energy and ideally both. But if you if you come into business and you don't have the financial resources to pay someone else to do things like really good marketing for you, then you're going to have to pay yourself in your time and energy to learn how to do that for yourself.

[00:10:42] Until you're at a stage where you can't afford for other people to do that for you. And I think because I came in from I came into it with nothing. Oh, I was coming in from the time and energy perspective. I didn't have the finances available to find the people that would do this really [00:11:00] well for me.

[00:11:00] So I went through a lot more uncomfortable learning curves as a result of that. And to some extent, I still have to keep that in check to this day, because now I've got into a habit of going well, I know how to fix the web. So I'll just fix the website or but I know how to set up social media for the month, so I'll do it.

[00:11:25] I know how to do literally Scott, before we came on this call, I was doing bookkeeping because I know how to do bookkeeping

[00:11:32] And so now I. Do a fire myself from all of the various different jobs that historically I couldn't afford to pay other people to do. And even this year even very recently, the last couple of months of. Reached a bit of a stage where there's lots of stuff going on in my personal life.

[00:11:57] And so I'm feeling a bit run [00:12:00] down and I'm going okay. I need to be able to step away from work and how come work seems so busy and it's. Maybe you're still doing some of those jobs that you don't need to do. That could be other people's jobs by now. And it's oh yeah, I don't need to be the salesperson anymore.

[00:12:16] We can afford a sales assistant things like that. Yeah, that's just a little bit about how it's evolved over time.

[00:12:25] Scott Maderer: Thinking about that path and going all the way back to the beginning the nursery worker did you always know, maybe not that you were going to be a business owner, you just talked about that was not necessarily the dream or the cloud that you thought you'd be under, but did you always think that.

[00:12:42] Position of helping people. Was that always your calling? How does this play out and become what

[00:12:48] Gemma Bailey: you do? Yeah. What it is now? Yes and no. So I think there was a point where it was very clear that it was going to become a helping people person. When I was very young, I [00:13:00] was more into creative stuff and that still follows through now in the work that I do.

[00:13:06] And just, if you could see my house. My house looks like. An art exhibition, quite a lot of the time, like literally to my left here, I've got three foam heads with different colored weeks on and interesting lighting and different sorts of makeup and fancy dress stuff.

[00:13:26] There's an airplane hanging off the wall down there. There is a whole wall filled up with bras bees and honey Combs it's crazy. When I was younger, I wanted for a long time to be. Working in fashion and design. And actually just through lockdown. Cause I had a bit more time on my hands.

[00:13:47] I did to play Marin Photoshop and illustrator saying, Hey, this is it now become another job that I need to find myself from because now I'm like, I can make the business cards. It doesn't mean I should. So [00:14:00] that was the sort of direction I was going in to begin with. And then there was a period of time when.

[00:14:07] Really doing a lot of like acting and amateur dramatic singing and dancing. So I thought I might go in that route for a little while, but I think at some stage probably just. Good old fashioned, sensible ness kicked in. And I realized that the chances of being successful in that kind of an arena and being able to make it as an actress or a singer or something like that.

[00:14:37] Like my chances were going to be fairly limited because I didn't have the connections. And I think that's one of those. Areas where you've got to have the right connections to be able to really find your way in in acting or singing or something like that. And I think looking back what happened [00:15:00] was my dad was a big drinker and so he would spend a lot of time in the pub and in this pub that he went to most frequently.

[00:15:13] They had a conservatory built for functions. And when I used to go to the pub with him, I didn't like being in the main area because back then you used to be able to smoke cigarettes in doors, in public places. So I used to hate this. Like the smoke would really stink. And so I, to go off into this conservatory area and take my bag of crisps and my orange juice that I had and I'd go sit out there and do some coloring or whatever else.

[00:15:43] Anyway, what started to happen was my dad's friends who would bring their children to the pub. They'd all come through into the conservatory area with me. And then the next thing I'm running a crash facility as 10 year [00:16:00] old me with these children and I'm negotiating with the landlord of the pub to get me crayons and coloring books and outside equipped.

[00:16:12] All of which happened.

[00:16:13] I realized from that, that I quite liked children and interacting with them and. I think my dad in particular had hoped that I would go into teaching rather than nursery nursing. But by the time I came to the end of my secondary education, I was really fed up with education and I just, I wanted to go to college and do as little as I might've needed to do, to be able to get into the world of work.

[00:16:44] I wanted to start earning money. And I was just a bit disillusioned. Education as a whole. And as it happened, I did really love college and I probably would have enjoyed staying on and doing more. But back then [00:17:00] even things like paying the bus fare to get to college was a stretch for my mom.

[00:17:07] And my dad didn't financially contribute cause all his money went to the pub. So the thought of going to university. And the expenses that would be associated with that just seemed like it was going to put everyone under a bit too much. So I didn't choose to go down the teaching route. I did my two years of college to get my nursery nursing diploma.

[00:17:30] And then from there went on to work in mainly day nurseries, but I also nannied for private families as well. And yeah, a whole host of other children related roles that I did for a significant period of time it was well over a decade that I was working with children.

[00:17:51] So yeah.

[00:17:53] Scott Maderer: And if you're calling out the working with children too, but even in [00:18:00] the way you phrase not wanting to go to university was helping.

[00:18:05] Gemma Bailey: Yeah, definitely. And I think the the sort of maybe quite tenuous link between working with children and helping others was I think that in going into that role, I thought that I was going to be Changing the world in some way, by shaping our future leaders.

[00:18:25] It turned out I was changing a lot of nappies, so it wasn't quite

[00:18:29] Yeah, I think that when I really got into, there was a few roles where I got in. I really got my teeth into the. Areas of my nursery nursing career that I enjoyed the most when we had situations, perhaps children with behavior issues. And I started carving out my own strategies for how to In a positive way impact these children's behavior.

[00:18:58] So sometimes it would be [00:19:00] a child who would be very aggressive and I would negotiate with them to reshape their behavior. Sometimes with the younger children, it would be things like the separation anxiety that they might have for their first few days. Mum had dropped them off and was going back to work.

[00:19:22] And I would find ways to ease that that distress that they were experiencing. And I really did enjoy the elements of the work, where I could see transition happening, where I could see change occurring. I don't think I could have said it then. I don't think I knew it then, but that was definitely the, make a difference aspect of myself starting to develop.

[00:19:50] And. Quite how I got to the hypnotherapy and NLP side. I really think [00:20:00] by that point, it was more that I was looking for something for myself. And I think a lot of people are when they start looking into particularly alternative therapies. But I think even people that go down the psychotherapy route or learning about psychology, It's quite often because we want to have an understanding of ourselves.

[00:20:22] And I was definitely in a place where I didn't feel like what I was doing in my career was stretching myself enough. I felt like I had more that I could give. And. I remember nannying and one of the jobs that I would do for the family was to do the ironing and I was standing there riding one day and thinking.

[00:20:49] I spent two years at college. I achieved an award because I was the best person in our year group. And one of my portfolios had [00:21:00] been moderated by the external moderators. He said it was the best portfolio in the country that year for the whole qualification. I didn't do all of that to be ironing.

[00:21:12] And that's no disrespect to anyone who might do ironing for a job because these days are fine dining, quite therapeutic in its own. But I just felt like my brain needed more. Like it needs. It needed to go back to growing and being stretched again. And I think that's why I wanted to start learning more about myself and my psychology, but by then I was working and I had responsibility.

[00:21:39] So it wasn't like I could just drop the job. Go to university. I still had to earn money. So for me, going into alternative therapies was a good way for me to do some learning transition. Obviously, eventually I transitioned to a new career completely[00:22:00] but also still be able to keep working during that time.

[00:22:05] And what I then discovered was. There was this whole other world out there of people who think the same way that I do, but I just hadn't met them in my day-to-day life, doing the sorts of jobs that I'd been doing up until that point.

[00:22:20] Scott Maderer: So when you think about all of that journey and your up bringing, and that history that you had of again, you just get a job.

[00:22:30] Yeah. Live in the government housing and that that's what the expectation was and the culture around that. How how did you come to see the world differently than the folks that were speaking into your life from an early age?

[00:22:46] Gemma Bailey: I like to say that I'm a very rebellious person, but I, on the most part rebel in ways that turn out to be quite helpful for [00:23:00] myself in a good way, in a good way.

[00:23:03] Exactly. So I think there was definitely an aspect of that. I think it was almost as if the people around me were saying the expectations are of you are here. And I looked at that and went, that's a ceiling, but I can punch through. Don't put that over my head. I think I can do more than that.

[00:23:26] And yeah, I think there was probably lots of things associated to it. I grew up really, for the most part of my life, it was just me and my mum living together. And she had quite a lot of programming around. This is all women can do. You need a man. And so lots of these sorts of rules, if you like.

[00:23:51] It felt like we're trying to get passed down to me, but I was really filtering them and it was almost like, no, [00:24:00] like I don't have to do it like that. So yeah, I would say there was definitely some stubbornness, some kickbacks and rebellion like my dad's rebellious stage was going out, getting drunk, creating out a key, not going to work so my rebellious streak was go to college, do the best you can get an award.

[00:24:24] And it was just completely oppositional to the way that my parents had been. And I think for a long time, certainly throughout adolescence, I really just felt I was pushing back. And I felt quite angry with the circumstances that I'd grown up in. And yeah, I just wanted more for myself.

[00:24:46] And I think the other thing that happened was because I knew I was going to be working with children in preparation for that I was babysitting. As the years went by. And as I matured, I was babysitting [00:25:00] for more and more wealthy families. And even prior to going to college and getting my diploma.

[00:25:06] I was babysitting for really nice hotels like we've got one six star hotel, which happens to be quite near to the town that I lived in and they offered a babysitting service. So I would babysit there and I do, you know what? I think the thing that happened was I would go to these really nice houses.

[00:25:29] And see, they're really nice cars and they really nice stuff. And I was asking myself, but why not me? Why not me as well, having those things. W why do I have to just remain as the person who helps the people that can afford nice things? What about if I became the person that could afford nice things as well.

[00:25:55] And there was definitely a kind of undercurrent [00:26:00] of envy through that at times that I see now, but I think there was also some fuel in that, because it just made me think that. I didn't have to associate myself as much with the class that I'd grown up in. And. Yeah, I think it opened up a whole new world.

[00:26:26] To me. It was almost like going to a different country sometimes when I did these babysitting jobs and and I'd go to their homes and be like, wow when I have a front room, I want to decorate it like this. And I started even doing things like a scrapbooking like how it gets some nice magazines or.

[00:26:46] A decent catalog and I'd cut pictures out and I'd be like one day in the future. When I've got my own house, I'm going to have conditions that look like that, or I'm going to have these, [00:27:00] this color scheme. And yeah, I just, I really, I think my mum would have said I was maybe a bit obsessive.

[00:27:09] I think I was just super focused on. The idea that I could have more than what was expected.

[00:27:18] Scott Maderer: And I think too, that it's interesting because you were exposed to something that had you not done the babysitting that you did, you may never have been exposed to. And so it changed it's the old thing of, you don't know what you don't know.

[00:27:34] If you're not exposed to a different that's one of the reasons travel and all of these things are so important to people because you don't get exposed to another culture. You don't even know that other cultures exist.

[00:27:45] Gemma Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I think was quite important about it.

[00:27:49] So it's talking about the babysitting. There was, I had two. Manage my reactions. When I went into these places, I had to act as if that [00:28:00] was a completely ordinary environment to me. I couldn't go in and be like, oh wow. I can do those things because I needed to be there and I needed to fit in I couldn't make myself exactly.

[00:28:17] Yeah. I didn't, I guess in a way, from a pride perspective, I didn't want to walk in and have them think. Oh, she's someone from a poor working class. She's never seen a home like this before. So I had to every single time kind of go in and acts as if I was cause some of it was like, Stuff that they have like physical stuff that they had that I didn't have in my house wasn't used to using.

[00:28:45] And there was one house that I worked in where they had a, an incinerator built into the sink and it was like, oh, you know how to use one of these? And I'm like, yes,

[00:28:54] Experiences like that. And then things like, oh, do you know how to set the house alarm? Yep. Yep. [00:29:00] Yeah. I've seen one of those before things like that. And I think that put me in a position where I had to act as if all of that was already part of my universe, even though it wasn't, but the fact that I acted as if it was almost made me feel like.

[00:29:18] Oh, yeah. This I've acted enough for so long. It now feels like it just is this just is the way it is. I'm used to these things. And I think that probably did something to my psychology as well.

[00:29:32] Scott Maderer: And yeah, that's brings us to the other half of this. I know from.

[00:29:40] Talking to you before and paying attention to what you do. You've talked about as the businesses grow, as you started growing and adding to the businesses, coming to these sorts of cliff edge moments where it's okay, I gotta, I just gotta jump to grow. I don't know. I don't know what is going to happen, but I got to do[00:30:00] how would you connect your past experiences. Plus now that moment of those cliff edge moments as a business owner how have, how do you think those are related and how has that helped you get to where

[00:30:13] Gemma Bailey: you are? Good question. I think probably one of the fast kind of cliff edge moments that I can remember pre business was I went for an interview.

[00:30:26] To become a deputy manager in a private Dana's rate. And I had not applied for a senior role at all at that point. So I was going from standard lowest wrong little ladder to, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to see what happens if I apply to become a deputy manager, let's see what happens.

[00:30:47] And then I got called to an interview and there were two stages. This interview, one was at the head of. And I went along and they said a part of what you'll need to do as a [00:31:00] deputy manager is to work through the accounting side of things and the income and whether people have paid their bills and all of this stuff.

[00:31:10] I remember sitting there looking at it, going, I do not know what this means, and I do not know maths enough to be able to figure this out. And so I think I really bombed at it. And then I spoke to somebody afterwards and they said, to be honest, you don't need to worry too much because you've only applied to become a deputy.

[00:31:27] So it's not going to fall too much on your shoulders. So I was like, oh, phew. Okay. So I felt a lot more comfortable about going to the second round of the interview, which was actually for a role that had come up locally. And so I went to this nursery, there was an area manager, there was a nursery manager there, and I got about halfway through the interview and the area managers said, we don't want to offer you this job.

[00:31:53] And I'll be honest. There was probably a little bit of me that went well, that's completely fair enough. And I was a bit like, [00:32:00] cool, phew. She said, we've got a, another nurse rate where the manager is going on maternity leave and we want you to be the monitor. And so I was a bit like, oh, okay. And I think because I knew that I had not done well in the first part of the interview.

[00:32:21] I knew that I was really quite out of my depth, but there was also a little bit of my brain that went, oh, we could just give it a go. And so I went for it. And yeah it was a big deal. It was a big jump. So I think that was probably the first time I had that sort of experience of, oh let's just go anyway and see what happens.

[00:32:51] And then after that, there was from the business side, Kind of different increments of this, which is going to jump, which is going to go [00:33:00] for anyway. And every single time it felt like a bigger deal. So you know that the very first time it was And going for it. I remember nursery working tobacco.

[00:33:14] Scott Maderer: Exactly.

[00:33:15] Where they say

[00:33:16] Gemma Bailey: yeah. And is the ironic thing is. Like I remember having a conversation with my dad once where say, one of my companies is an LP for kids and that's where we teach mental health strategies to children and young people. And and that's a brand that I created and the methodologies that are in there uh, from original NLP, but I've customized customize them to make them appropriate for children and thrown in some new ones along the way.

[00:33:46] And my dad said to me one day so who actually invented NLP for kids? And I said NLP was invented by Richard Bandler and John grinder back in the 1970s. And [00:34:00] he went, no, but NLP for kids who actually invented NLP for kids. And I went that was me. So right. I created NLP for kids. I didn't create NLP, but NLP for kids is me.

[00:34:12] And he went. No. What I'm saying is the NLP for kids part. So I know that you do that, but who created that? Yeah, again, that was me.

[00:34:25] And in the end, I just don't think you understand the question.

[00:34:30] And it was wow, we've got to a point now where you know, this entity that I've created. So we've got about 26 franchisees in NLP for kids at this moment in time and trained a few hundred people. Where it's at a size whereby parents actually don't even believe that I'm the person behind it.

[00:34:52] And that's actually quite lovely in a way, because to go from don't worry. You can always go back to nursery work to not being able to [00:35:00] comprehend quite what I've created. It just goes to show you the transition. And so obviously along that road, there were lots of these cliff edges that came up where it was.

[00:35:10] Oh my God, am I really going to do this? Am I going to jump? And one of the first ones was placing an advert in the yellow pages. So I don't know if you must have something similar. Do you have the white pages, like a magazine catalog?

[00:35:23] Scott Maderer: Yeah. For the younger people that are listening. Yeah. Yellow pages was this great big book that had phone numbers in it and for businesses and sometimes for individuals and you had pages and pages of ads.

[00:35:36] Yeah. Yeah. That those of you that have only lived in the online world have no

[00:35:40] Gemma Bailey: Yeah. So back in those days that brochure was like, maybe, I don't know, like seven centimeters thick. Now it's about a centimeter thick and I don't even know if they still make it. But yeah, paying for that advert was like, oh my God, am I really gonna do this? And I did it. And then it was[00:36:00] Getting an office and getting into a rental contract.

[00:36:04] And what, if I don't see enough clients, I'm going to be obliged to still pay the rent at the end of the month. Am I going to be able to do it? That was a huge one that I was really scared of. Even things like putting up my prices at the time was like, oh my God, am I really going to do this?

[00:36:20] What if they say no? And I remember practicing with. I've spoken to another therapist and he'd said I'd really like to refer some work to you, but you gonna have to start charging more because all of the people I work with charge 150 pounds per session, and I was charging like 65.

[00:36:41] So he said put your prices up, then you'll be able to afford the office. And just he was very encouraging. He was like just do it. And I remember practicing kind of picking up my phone and saying, It's 150 pounds per session. And what I [00:37:00] noticed was that I couldn't say it, my voice would crack, so I'd go.

[00:37:03] It's a hundred.

[00:37:04] Scott Maderer: The other one I like is when it's like this it's 150 pounds per session because the question becomes the question. It's no, it's not actually a question

[00:37:14] Gemma Bailey: say yet. So I had to charge less. I had to say a one 20 because and work. Because I was really uncomfortable with confidence.

[00:37:23] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So there were loads of those first employee was another one, a bigger office was the next one. And then it was buying a building buying a building that would house my office, that would house me. And yeah, and that was huge. That was really big. That was really scary.

[00:37:45] And that was what. The immediately afterwards, literally the next day. Oh my God, what have I done? Because it was such a big project. What is now, our office was a hairdressers [00:38:00] walked in on the first day and there were sinks. They were still sinks. There was still hair. And it was just like, oh man, I've got to do like a whole shop fit here.

[00:38:09] And I have no experience in that. I don't know why I'm doing. Yeah, it was crazy. There were a few of those big leaps, for sure.

[00:38:18] Scott Maderer: But again I want to tie it back to the journey you started doing that even at a very young age effectively, because you were you were walking into the home that you had no experience with and saying, Hey, I'll figure it out.

[00:38:34] I think there's a connection between learning too, and it's not fake it till you make it, but it it's not that you were figuring it out. If you weren't, you wouldn't have come back. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:38:49] Gemma Bailey: definitely. I think there's something around confidence, breeds, confidence if you can go at it with a confident attitude to some extent, it feels [00:39:00] like your brain unlocks a few extra.

[00:39:02] Resources for you to be more skilled at figuring things out and don't get me wrong. I've definitely had times in my life where I've had to, what I would call, have a word with myself and to take myself off to one side and say come on get it together. What's the very first thing you need to do or what are you going to do about it?

[00:39:28] And when I work with clients, now, those sorts of strategies are I refer to them as quality questions. You know what good quality question. Can you ask yourself in this moment that is going to get you past maybe the stuckness or the brain freeze or whatever's going on so that you find a way forward.

[00:39:50] And I feel now the generations that kind of coming up through the ranks now in a way have less excuses [00:40:00] than maybe my generation did, because there's so much information available to you so quickly. If you are stuck, you can literally ask Google and the chances are someone else's also relatively similar question at some stage already, and someone else's published and.

[00:40:15] Whereas for me, it was in any one of my generation and before that you were relying on your own devices a lot more because there wasn't instant access to information you really had to dig deep, rely on your confidence and muddle your way through quite a lot of the time.

[00:40:36] Scott Maderer: And there's a both end. What I mean by that is the. Yeah today. Yes. You have access to information in a way that was never true. 10 years ago, again, we were talking about the yellow pages earlier. However there's also still the, but you don't know what you don't know either, yeah. And I think it is largely comes down [00:41:00] to whether or not you ask the questions. Do you know that you can ask the questions? Do you know what questions to ask? Do you know where to go to ask the questions? So there's definitely still a degree of like your own inner resources need to be switched on.

[00:41:16] Gemma Bailey: And that thread of confidence it needs to be in there underpinning the actions that you choose to take. I think that's super important.

[00:41:26] Scott Maderer: You can follow Gemma on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook as at people building. And she's active over on YouTube as well. If you start for people building, she has a website. People building.co.uk. Of course she's also active on LinkedIn is Gemma Bagley. I'll have links to all of this over in the show notes as well for everybody.

[00:41:49] Jim, is there anything else that you'd like to share with the

[00:41:51] Gemma Bailey: listener? I would absolutely encourage people to get onto the people building podcast. Which you can find via all of the major [00:42:00] podcasting outlets. We have a series of hypnosis audios as well which if you're into self-hypnosis, we've got a massive suite of different subject areas that you can explore.

[00:42:13] Those are available via iTunes. They're also available on the people building website. All of our training these days is done remotely. So it's partially via videos that you initially work through and complete assessments around. And then the rest of it is live, but online. So both for the work that I do with NLP, for kids and with people building that is now accessible the world over.

[00:42:39] And so if anyone's interested in the kind of work that I do and is interested in gaining a qualification for them, Definitely hop on over to either NLP four kids.org or people building, which is people building.co.uk.

[00:42:53] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and [00:43:00] listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoy this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.

[00:43:21] All. ITunes rate, it'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.


In today's episode, I ask Gemma about:

  • Her journey from starting out to running 4 companies and a non-profit.
  • How her upbringing and personality affected her when finding her calling...  
  • How there were cliff edge decisions and what she did to make the leap...
  • and more.....

Some of the Resources recommended in this episode: 

I make a commission for purchases made through the following link.

Confidence breeds confidence you know.  Like if you can go at it with a confident attitude, then your brain unlocks a few extra resources for you. – Gemma Bailey

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About the Author Scott

Helping people to be better Stewards of God's gifts. Because Stewardship is about more than money.

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