Joy First®

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 me one question that blew the whole plan out of the water. This is the first in a 10-part series where...

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 refused to cooperate, a garden picnic, and water fight with the kids, and a barefoot evening watering...

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 pre-treated wood 'build-your-own' kits later, I had one.) This is the first of the Season 4 joy experiments,...

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 to colour, and it is a bit of a confession. Because even as a colour psychology expert, I got so caugh...

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 down' version of joy. Today we're talking about the science behind visual progress loops and how your munda...

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. Meaning, growth, impact, & legacy. The thread that holds everything else together. In this episode...

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 Audit: Environment. I scored reasonably high on this one (as I guess you'd probably expect) but then.....

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 survival. Sometimes it's taking 20 minutes out to nip to the garden centre to get covered in manure to make a...

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 episode of the Joy First Audit series, I'm sharing my score for Category 3: Connection... and even thoug...

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 security section of the Joy First Audit (nine out of twenty, if you want to know), and getting real abou...

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 result. YouTube: https://youtu.be/bkehOyf-oxw Join us on Substack and take the audit: https://substack.co...

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 the perfect place to talk about baselines and audits. I just audited my entire life using the same fram...

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 First book, it feels like I've really been tested. It's been a really challenging 18 months and I've be...

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 that's been making you so uncomfortable all year. You'll discover: What a 12-year-old with a handpan and 30...

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. Why haven't we been encouraged to prioritize what makes us happier? Well, because it's not really in any...

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. It's not just "modern minimalism." And it's definitely not sophisticated. It's colonialism. It's capit...

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 what we need? More white." So let's get into it! In this episode, we're exploring: The hidden history...

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 the process. If you're tired of the content hamster wheel and ready for marketing that actually feels go...

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. When was the last time you bought something expensive purely because it sparked joy? That weekend getaway...

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 fat that makes your brain scream "more please" without you even consciously deciding. Your brand can hi...

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 celebrating? Research shows industry outsiders drive breakthrough innovation at significantly higher rates...

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 their way to their answers to these three questions. Today I'm breaking down the three elements that ac...

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 universal patterns, you're not just creating marketing. You're activating something that bypasses conscious tho...

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 called out, stay with me. Because I'm not here to shame you. I'm here to help you understand what's actually...

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 into my presentation about Colour Psychology)  If your visual brand is as on-point righ...