PODCAST · education
Joy First®
by J.Nichole Smith
Finding joy in survival mode. This bi-weekly show is for high-capacity women who find themselves entering their IDGAF era. We explore what it looks like to find, choose and share joy when life is full, work is loud and you have lost the will (and ability) to keep pretending you have it all together. Expect inspiration, education and practical how-to’s for easily and consistently putting joy first in tiny little ways each day: adding-up to a life and career where instead of 'just getting by' you feel truly expressed, fulfilled and alive. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
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We Were Raised to Be Nice. That's a Trap.
Five years in a room about race, the family myth I went digging into, and why comfort isn't the same as joy. There's a phrase I use about colour all the time: once you see it, you can't un-see it. And while this is super true, and reflected back to us daily by our students and clients - actually...
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A couple decades chasing Freedom... then I chose Roots (and kids)
Kids, roots, and the joy first choices that don't seem to add up on paper. I'm recording this one from my bed, surrounded by the dog, the laundry and my daughter's panda, because (as usual) I'm navigating chaos: the floors are being replaced and there's nowhere quiet left in the house. Which, as...
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I'd Never Had a Gap Year. So I Took One at 35
I lost my dog. I rented out the house. I tackled a mountain of adulting to finally live the freedom I'd built. And it all started with one small tweak to my calendar. I will never forget standing in a tiny grocery store in Lake Como, Italy... holding a lemon almost as big as my hand with the…
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Last Minute Launch Pivot (that became a full-on rebellion)
This joy first decision is jumping the queue in the top ten because it’s happening right now, and it’s massive. As you may know, in this season I’ve been sharing the top ten joy first decisions of my life in a nice orderly chronological countdown, and then yesterday happened and had to through…
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My big fat £40,000 joy first mistake
When the dream I had fought for became the dread I couldn't escape... and decision I dreaded unlocked the joy I'd been looking for all along. I finally opened the shop I'd wanted for a decade: A photography studio and pet boutique two minutes from my front door, in beautiful Southwest London. I...
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Why I Left Mr. 8 out of 10
At 28 I had two businesses, an engagement ring, and a box of save the dates I could not bring myself to send. My fiancé was a genuinely nice guy. We had a solid 8/10 life: there was no, drama, no red flags, and we were comfortable... which I guess is what made it so hard to explain why I was...
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I was supposed to be a Vet. I became a Pet Photographer instead.
At sixteen I had it all figured out. I was going to be a veterinarian: I'd get to work with animals, I'd make a decent living, and I'd never have to be the broke, starving artist everyone warned me about. Then my boss at the vet clinic looked at some photographs I'd taken at the clinic and asked…
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A Real Life Joy First Day
Today was too hot to work. Schools shut, there were heat warnings and travel bans in London, and my garden office turned into a sauna. So instead of the day I had planned, I let the day become something else, and somewhere between a slow coffee with my father-in-law, a grocery shop where my brain...
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What Would Be Easy?
The first joy experiment: why ease is a better engine than discipline, and how to choose it. I wanted a cut flower garden for three years and did absolutely nothing about it, until I asked myself the question I've been putting to my clients for over a decade: what would be easy? ( £80 and 2...
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Colour is Free, Instant, and Everywhere. So Why Aren't We Using It?
I have spent my career using colour as a precision instrument... For brands, for commercial photography, for building the kind of visual identity that makes people trust and buy. But somewhere along the way, I forgot to use it for myself. This is the first of our joy experiment episodes dedicated...
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The Unglamorous Truth About Joy
What if the most ordinary moment in your week turned out to be a joy ritual in disguise? In this episode, I'm sharing what I've been learning as I move deeper into my own 'Joy First experiments', and why the most surprising discoveries have had almost nothing to do with that big 'jump up and…
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The Purpose Audit
Have you ever hit a milestone you'd been working towards for years, only to sit in the silence afterwards and think, is this it? This is the finale episode of the Joy First Audit series: where we've been exploring the 6 categories of the Joy First audit, and today we're onto Category 6: Purpose....
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The Environment Audit
No matter what colours you choose, your environment is not neutral. The colours on your walls, the quality of your light, whether your bedroom feels like a sanctuary or a storage unit, these things are doing something to you, all the time. This episode, we're exploring Category 5 of the Joy First...
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The Joy Audit
I'm recording this episode from my bed, at 6:30pm, surrounded by laundry, with a partially sedated dog, and with maybe 15 minutes before my kids come home. I cannot think of a more perfect setting for a conversation about joy. Because joy usually isn't the Instagram version. Sometimes it's...
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The Connection Audit
Did you know the longest-running happiness study in history (Harvard) found that the number one predictor of a long, healthy, joyful life wasn't money or success, it was the quality of your relationships? So why does connection feel like the first thing we sacrifice when life gets full? In this...
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The Money Audit
Did you know that financial scarcity actually causes a measurable drop in IQ? Not just a feeling, actual cognitive impairment that changes how we make decisions, often making a hard situation significantly worse. This week on the Joy First Podcast, I'm sharing my honest score from the money and...
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The Vitality Audit
This episode kicks off a 6-part series exploring each category of the Joy First Audit. Today (live from sunny Morocco ooh la la) we’re diving into Vitality: energy, hormones, time scarcity, and breaking up with optimization. I share my own (not great) score and what I’m changing right now as a...
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The Joy First Audit
Some episodes arrive perfectly lit, well-rested, and uninterrupted. This was not one of them. This one arrived after bedtime, dinner, swimming lessons, forgotten groceries, a squeaky dog toy, and that low-level anxiety of juggling what work needs and what everybody else needs. Which, actually is...
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The Joy First Experiment Begins
The Joy First Experiment Begins After three years of podcasting about joy, colour, and business, I'm doing something different. Something scarier. I've spent two decades teaching entrepreneurs how to build brands that create desire, joy, and transformation. But as I've sat down to write this Joy...
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New Year, Whole You
What if the thing you've been trying to resolve is actually your secret weapon? In this special New Years episode, Nic's mom is visiting from Seattle (complete with sourdough starter and yoga mat) and her wisdom bombs inspire this special end-of-the-year episode that may just close that loop…
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Finding Your Joy Codes
We've been living backwards. The lives we've been encouraged to build, rooted in consumption, achievement, and constant productivity, keep pushing us further from what actually creates lasting joy. But decades of research tells us plenty, we know what makes humans thrive. We've known for years.…
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The Great Grey-down
The Great Grey Down: How We Lost Our Color (and How We Get It Back) Have you seen how the internet just lost its mind when photos surfaced of what the house from 'Home Alone' looks like now? (spoiler: it's monochrome) Turns out, the systematic draining of colour from our world is not an accident....
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Pantone's 2026 Colour of the Year Controversy
Pantone just named white as their 2026 Color of the Year. And the internet is... not okay. When 'Cloud Dancer' was announced last week, I canceled everything to record this episode. Because like many of us, I simply could not wrap my head around how Pantone looked at the world and said: "You know...
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Don't Shout Louder: Resonate Deeper
What if you don't need a bigger audience, or a bigger budget... but deeper resonance? In this episode, we're talking about why "trying to be everywhere" might be killing your impact, the psychology behind what makes brands instantly magnetic, and how to stand out without burning yourself out in…
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The Profitability of Positivity
Everyone keeps telling you to "push on the pain point" But what if that's exactly why your marketing feels so hard? What if that's why you freeze up when it's time to post, or why your sales copy makes you feel icky? Here's the truth: Not all purchasing decisions are driven by problem-solving.…
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Finding your Brand's Bliss Point
Where Purpose, Product Market Fit, and Presentation Collide What makes Cheetos, Krispy Kreme and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup so dang addicting? These treats aren't perefction on accident, food scientists engineer them to hit what they call the "bliss point": the perfect balance of sugar, salt, and...
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The Outlier Advantage in Branding
What Makes You Weird, Makes You Wealthy You've been trying to fit in. Learning the industry standards. Following best practices. Being professional. Being credible. Being like everyone successful. But what if you're optimizing for the wrong thing? What if instead of apologizing, you should be...
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It's not about the logo
Your Logo Isn't the Problem (and It's not the solution either) You have 0-7 seconds. In that time, three subconscious questions get answered: "Can I trust this?" "Is this for me?" "Is it worth it?" Obviously in this time, your clients are not consciously analyzing your logo. But they are feeling...
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How to use Archetypes in Branding
Humans Have Been Telling the Same Twelve Stories for Thousands of Years. Your Brand Should Too. From ancient Greek mythology to Marvel movies. From Shakespeare to Star Wars. The same patterns keep showing up because they're wired into human psychology. And when your brand taps into these…
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Death by Procrastibranding
That Endless Tweaking of Your Brand? It's Not About Making it Better. When you spend hours researching the perfect font pairing over and over again, you're not actually working on your business. You're avoiding something scarier. This is what I call 'procrastibranding'. And if you just felt…
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Building Desire & Honing Harmony
Picture this: A room full of 5 yr olds listening to 'Golden' - when that three-part harmony hits... their little faces lit up - they could feel the harmony (and I got about 1000 cool points from my kids for being the mum who not only came in for career day, but managed to work KPop Demon Hunters...
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Decoding Colour Psychology in Marketing
I Spent Six Months Fighting Over Three Shades of Grey. Here's Why It Actually Mattered. Picture this: I'm VP of brand at a tech startup, locked in a battle with our UI/UX designer over whether our app's greys should be warm or cold. She's insisting on blue-based greys: Apple does it, all the big...
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Four Brand Personality Types
I spent over a decade searching for a way to ensure when my clients invested in rebranding, ROI was guaranteed. (not just making something new or pretty for the sake of new or pretty) As a serial entrepreneur as well as a branding expert, I've always had extremely high standards for how, where…
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Psychology of a Joy First Brand
This Week I Discovered Something That Will Change How You Think About Customer Psychology Forever Twenty minutes. That's all it took for me to go from casual observer to completely bought-in advocate of a brand I'd barely heard of before. No pressure tactics, no manufactured urgency, just pure...
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Welcome to the Joyconomy
During the Great Depression, Cosmetic Sales Rose 28% While banks failed and bread lines formed in 1929, the beauty industry became the fourth largest industry in North America. In 2008, as the economy collapsed, Lego achieved record profits. During the 2020 pandemic, the pet industry exploded…
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Celebrating 20 Years in Business!
This is a special, intimate, informal storytelling episode. After a full season of sharing other peoples' stories of finding Joy First ways of working, I thought I would share mine - especially since as of tomorrow I am now officially celebrating 20 years in business!! Want to watch the Video...
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Jennifer Waters - from 'Forcing it' into 'Flow'
"You'll Be an Urn Someday" - The Most Beautiful Business Story You've Never Heard I can't wait for you to meet today's guest. Jennifer Waters and I first connected nine years ago when she joined one of my very first online programs. She had a pet photography side-hustle, and she was desperate to...
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Carrie Green: Finding Joy Again After Burnout
"I Don't Think I Can Do This Anymore" In this beautifully revealing, intimate conversation, Carrie Green opens up about the darkest period of her business journey. In this episode Carrie shares with us the most generous and honest reflection on entrepreneurial burnout that I've ever heard. Having...
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Ruth Ridgeway: Doing it Your Way
Building a Joy First Career as a Non-conforming Creative Today I'm sitting down with Ruth, the brilliantly creative mind who, when asked what her current job title is, replies with a laugh, "Today we're going with digital product strategist." This sense of fun sets the tone for our entire...
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Rha Goddess: Intentional Ambition
"If It Ain't Joyful, I Ain't Doing It" Today I'm sharing what might be the most important conversation of this entire Joy First season. I had the incredible honor of sitting down with Rha Goddess – organizational soul coach, author, and one of the wisest voices I've encountered on the subject of...
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Nicole Begley: From Zookeeper to Entrepreneur
When You Follow Your Joy, It Won't Steer You Wrong Today I'm chatting with one of my business besties, Nicole, who embodies everything this season of Joy First is about. After spending 13 years as a zookeeper making just over $30K/year at the peak of her career, Nicole started a family which led...
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Top 'Marketing Bro' Strategies for Joy First® Working
Today I'm breaking my own rules We're spotlighting 5 dudes who've significantly influenced my Joy First® way of working. I'm 100% committed to amplifying women's voices, but today I'm giving a shout-out to a few men who have shaped my approach to creating the freedom-filled, joy-centered business…
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Jazze Jervis: Working Joy First® with Human Design
What if your frustration isn't a sign of weakness but wisdom? What if your body knows something your mind hasn't yet recognized? In this episode of Joy First, we are diving deep with Human Design business strategist Jazze Jervis into a revolutionary approach to work and life that challenges...
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Paige Brunton: Focus
Is the key to business success hustling harder or focusing deeper? In this episode of Joy First, I sit down with Paige who challenges the frantic, scattered approach that leaves so many entrepreneurs exhausted. We deep dive into her #1 productivity hack (which isn't a hack at all) — and discuss…
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Bonus: Free Goodies, New stuff & Season Highlights
Well Season 1 has come to an end - thanks for joining us! Season 2, 'Joy First ways of Working' will be back March 12th 🧡 Learn more about Founders Circle: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/JFFC Previous Episodes Mentioned: Joy vs. Evil Finding Winter Joy with Colour and Ayurveda 10 Joy Recipes for…
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The Colour Black
Have you ever stopped to think about how the colours you wear, see, and surround yourself with shape the way you feel—and how others see you? Now... how about how they relate to the colour of your skin? Join Dr. Lynne Maureen Hurdle, Justin Nai'im Hurdle-Price and I for a deep, thought-provoking...
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The Joy of Colourful Food
What can it look like to put joy back in our relationship with Food? In my Joy First journey I've definitely embraced comfort food and that food is a REALLY important part of my joy... so I think this conversation is SUPER important. So today we're chatting with Laura Lacey Nutritionist and…
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10 Joy Recipes for the New Year
How about we skip the New Year's Resolutions this year and instead get real about the practical how-to's of finding and prioritizing joy amidst the challenges of entrepreneurship and family life? Today we've got ten road-tested, simple but powerful recipes for making joy easier to find, choose…
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Finding Winter Joy with Colour & Ayurveda
Dr. Janna shares how to navigate darker, colder months that often have a negative impact on our mental and physical well-being. Together we explore the symptoms and causes of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and we unpack light, colour, and nature's powerful role in lifting our mood and…
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BONUS: The Cult of Neutral
In response to recent announcement, in which it named 'Mocha Mousse' the 2025 Colour of the Year, we've pulled this special episode from our previous show: 'joy, colour, impact and dogs'... In a nutshell, my opinion on about glorifying this delicious shade of brown is: yes please, especially if…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Finding joy in survival mode.
This bi-weekly show is for high-capacity women who find themselves entering their IDGAF era. We explore what it looks like to find, choose and share joy when life is full, work is loud and you have lost the will (and ability) to keep pretending you have it all together.
Expect inspiration, education and practical how-to’s for easily and consistently putting joy first in tiny little ways each day: adding-up to a life and career where instead of 'just getting by' you feel truly expressed, fulfilled and alive.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
HOSTED BY
J.Nichole Smith
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Joy First® have?
Joy First® currently has 56 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Joy First® about?
Finding joy in survival mode. This bi-weekly show is for high-capacity women who find themselves entering their IDGAF era. We explore what it looks like to find, choose and share joy when life is full, work is loud and you have lost the will (and ability) to keep pretending you have it all...
How often does Joy First® release new episodes?
Joy First® has 56 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Joy First®?
You can listen to Joy First® on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Joy First®?
Joy First® is created and hosted by J.Nichole Smith.
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