The Write Path #28 - "A Journey to Raising Brave Hearts" with Jessica Broadway!!!

Our guest today is a multifaceted young lady who is taking the industry by storm!  Jessica Broadway is an author, a speaker, a podcaster and a MIndset & Success Coach!  Her book, "A Journey to Raising Brave Hearts" has been rising up the charts and is making an impact on thousands of lives.  She is also the co-host of the new breakout podcast "Big Ideas," along with her two cohosts Mark Steiner and Justin Gabossi.  Jessica is also in the process of launching her new solo endeavor, "The Jessica Broadway Show," which will be released on all of the top platforms on Monday, May 18,2026!!! This lady has an incredible story.  Don't miss it. Listen now. 

Her website:  www.jessicabroadway.com

Her podcast:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/1o4e1kk5MPUNSLElwHXto8?si=MuJEs28gRMqBxbrEJk4jaw

Welcome to the Write Path Podcast, where being an author, an actual author, still matters. This isn't the place for the Chat GPT experts or the AI buffs to churn out soulless content with no heart.  This is the place where authors share their journeys, explore their creativity, examine the "Why?" behind it all and come together to celebrate each other. This is the podcast for authors, about authors, and by an author, where the truth still counts and words still have power. Join Us!  You have a story to tell!

Contact us on all our social media platforms and email us at thewritepathpodcast@gmail.com  

This is the place where authors know that every page... is a step forward. Let's move forward together, let's move forward today. Listen now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Right Path Podcast, where being an author, an actual author, still matters. This is the podcast that is for authors. It's about authors. It's done by an author. It's where we share our journeys, we explore our creativity, and most importantly, folks, we examine the why behind it all. Our guest today is an absolutely fantastic lady I've had the honor of interviewing a couple of different times now, but not like this, and not in depth about this project, which is incredibly important to her and uh and what she's done in the world. Um, she is a speaker and a podcaster, in addition to being an author, and um her books are A Journey to Raising Brave Hearts. She's also uh written the Notice and Wonder Journal, and she co-wrote the Perfect Day Success Roadmap. We're gonna talk about all those books today and kind of get to the why behind all of it. Please welcome to the show, Jessica Broadway. Jessica, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

I am doing well and excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Appreciate it very much. Appreciate it. I'm excited to have you here and to uh kind of dive into this a little bit. We've talked about some podcasting stuff before and uh we got to talk about faith a little bit and some things like that, but we really haven't had a chance to kind of dive into your books. And I know that that's like very close to your heart. It's sort of central to a lot of the work that you do. Um so before we like start tearing everything apart and really diving into this, tell everybody a little bit about you know who is Jessica Broadway, um, you know, what's your background? What sort of led up to Jessica, you know, not only getting the content for these books, right? And and creating them, but wanting to put them down on paper and share this story.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, this has been such a journey. That's why the first one was was titled A Journey to. Uh that's really the only way I could describe it. Um, I I grew up on the mission field. Um, my dad was a preacher. We lived a very kind of public, fishbowly kind of life. Um and I, you know, I just kind of felt like a lot of a lot of what I went through was just like kind of life, you know, and the that mantra of put your big girl pants on and deal with it, you know, these um coping strategies, if you will, for that's just life were just the way I just grew up that way. I didn't even think of things that I had been through or experiences I had of being anything other than life being life. And um, I'm very creative. I'm an entrepreneur, I have three kids and a husband. Uh, we'll be celebrating 23 years being married here shortly in the next week. Congratulations. That's fantastic. We dated for a couple of years, so we've been together 20 25 years, you know, and um I'll be turning 44 uh in a couple of months. So, you know, we've been together quite a long time and in a lot of developmental milestones of our lives, we've kind of grown up together in that sense, right? Like that last part of that 20s and 30s. And um during that time, I've had to become different versions of myself, you know, like uh the shift from being single to being a wife, and then to being a mother, and then how do you become a mother and still contribute financially to your home? What does that working mom look like? And then a season of deciding that I was gonna work for myself and be an entrepreneur and try to do other things so I could be home with my kids. Each season has brought different things, but particularly what kind of led to writing books about it is I've always been a journaler, I've always been a storyteller, and I've always just kept that practice when I see the kids do things, I'd write things down and I would keep these journals. And then in um let's see, 2011. Is that right? I'll get the date wrong because dates I don't know. Yeah, no, you wouldn't know, would you? Let's leave dates out of this conversation. That sounds like a lot of blurred dates. Anyway, when my father passed away, um that just shook me in a different way. So I had a degree in psychology and biblical studies. Um, so like on paper, I should be able to think it out or pray it out. And I mean, that's it's a summary of it for myself. And yet I was very stuck and frustrated. And so I went to a workshop for people who were uh grieving and study started studying the concept of grief, and I realized that loss had been part of my journey for a lot longer than I realized it had been. I would have told you that right there in that season um that I hadn't really experienced much loss before. Um, but yet when I looked back under these new understandings and this new awareness of loss being like a change in a pattern of behavior, changes in our circumstances and how we can emotionally respond to that, it was a new lens that I had never been trained to look at before. And so that kind of gave me an aha moment. And I was like, man, if I'm dealing with all this stuff and I've got certifications to technically process or like frameworks or belief systems, and I'm still struggling with this, maybe grief is different than these intellectual knowings or um the effort that I could do. Maybe there's something missing here. And so I started studying like how does it affect entrepreneurship? How does it affect marriages, relationships? And that became a huge passion of mine. And um so I thought, what could I do to help other people? And I could talk about the work that I do, or I could talk about my experiences, and what better way to do that would be than to grab out my old journals. So a journey to raising brave heart is part of my journal entries, and then my reflections um after the fact, or stories that shaped me and um the kind of the frame, the journals entry behind it. So there's a lot of in this book, um, my journey is mapped out in the real raw emotion of the moment that I was experiencing it, and then the hindsight that I would apply now, what I learned in that moment. What do I feel like the spirit is telling me in those moments? How was I nurtured? How did my faith integrate? How did my training now become a layer of healing for myself as well? Um, and I wanted to write about things that connect us all, and that's the stories of our lives. Those are things that we can all relate to or we can all kind of see ourselves in. I didn't want to read, write another how-to manual for people on how to deal with stuff. I wanted to be able to let people see themselves in my experiences. And the only way we really can do that is by telling the emotional truth of the moment. And so it's very vulnerable, very personal. Um, but I believe that brave is the internal work you do, and then the courage is the action piece that you step out and do the thing where you create the change. So a journey to raising brave hearts is really about rising out of the ashes of the things that hold you back, the things you can consciously become aware of, and the subconscious things too. Learning how to dream again after loss, how to dream big. You know, there was a season of life that I just started, you know, not dreaming big. Like, you know, my prayers were limited to things that I could guarantee would eventually be right. You know, I didn't want to ask for audacious big things um anymore because that was more disappointment I didn't want to handle. So learning how to how to create what you wish existed, how to be intentional, how to tell the emotional truth. That was the heart behind that book. Um, and I'm proud of it. It was my first book, but it truly was a hope and a prayer, you know. And I hope this is something we can dive into is the how-to, how to, you know, how to write a book, because I disqualified myself for a lot more years than I should have.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Okay, I mean you unpacked a lot. Let me ask a couple questions. I want to get right back to that, the how-to of the how-to. I love that. Um, the uh first, I gotta tell you, you know, we all put our own lens on something. And I knew you um as, you know, a mother and so on, and I knew you had kids before I even knew about the name of the book. And so that's just kind of how our relationship was, you know, came together. Um, and then I heard a journey to raising brave hearts. I instantly slapped a parenting um theme on it, and I pictured you and your your children, right? And me and mine. And so that's exactly what I thought, you know, where we were going. And then the more I've talked to you, and especially after today, it even became more clear, um, that's not what it's about at all. It it, you know, and raising is not necessarily raising as in children, but it's raising as in raising up, it sounds like. So it's raising up these brave hearts and building them into brave hearts, and one of the hearts is yours.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, it's about that re-examination phase. And uh, so like this is the cover of the book, and I wanted to create this visual perception of this rising out of the stuff, you know, and raising up your own brave. But then the heart is what connects all of us, and so there's this kind of continual line. And this is actually my son's handwriting. I had him write, I had him write the word, uh, I said, draw me a picture of what you think a brave heart looks like. And so you do a heart with the word brave on it. So I pulled the writing and I actually put that on the on the cover of the book, and um that is what it's about. It's not just my brave that I have to embrace and to raise up that cultivate that healing inside myself, but then how do I look at and recognize what your brave heart is and call that out in you too? Like, how do I encourage you to to do the inner work to heal and then take the courage to make the changes in your life that you'd like to see? Um, it's a legacy piece, you know. Um, one of the things that I hated or missed the most about my dad is that like I just missed hearing his wisdom. And so for me, this was also like a little bit of um a selfish thing is that if I was gone at some when I'm gone, that my kids could look at things and they could go back and read stories and there would be some sort of archive for them too, you know. So it was multi-purpose for me. Um, but it didn't really follow, I don't think, any of the traditional sense of why someone would write a book. But um I was just hoping to help some people that might be hurting and give them permission to do some work.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Nice. And you actually coach this work too, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I do. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So the book sounds like it's a pretty integral part of the coaching.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Um, it is. I suppose I tried to really stay out of the intellectual space of like telling people what to do, but I also did give exercises and insight in there too. Um, but as an integrative growth and grief specialist, um, I work on helping people integrate their and, you know, the happy and sad and integrated growth is about being more of who you are, not less of who you are. It's not about, you know, trying to overcome stuff, but about embracing those pieces of you. Um, but grief is a definitely a lens that we kind of look through to see the nuances of unhealed pieces of our hearts.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Wow. Okay. Let's uh let's get back to what you wanted to talk about a minute ago, and that is let's get into the nitty-gritty of the how-to of the how to. I mean, you're sitting here, you got a pile of journals, right, all over the table, and you're like, all right, I'm gonna take all this information and I'm gonna write a book. Where do you start? How did that go? What what did you learn along the way?

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Well, um, I think I broke a fair share of like writers' books or whatever the author's courses are out there because I knew nothing. I really didn't. I um I didn't know anything about that world. I didn't know about self-publishing. And I had a good friend um who had written a self-published before, and she is like, you know, you don't need like you could just write the book and put it out there. Like you don't have to be a bestseller, you don't have to, you know, do a bunch of and and those things are helpful. But I think one thing that people need to know is why do you want to write a book? If if you want to write a book to make money, there's a different strategy. If you want to write a book to keep a promise to yourself and do something, you can throw all those rules out the window and just get done, get it done, you know. So I took all these journals and I knew that, yeah, if you make a couple bucks, that's great. But I wanted to have something. I wanted to create this thing that I've been telling myself I'd do for a very long time and never done. So I took all the journals and I started sorting them out into these stories. And, you know, I I I've mentioned this on another podcast before, um, but I had a real reckoning moment when I was rocking my baby, my newborn, and I couldn't use my voice. I'd had had to be, I was waiting for a vocal cord surgery. And I was like, fine, if I can't talk, like, what do you want me to hear, God? And he very clearly said, it's time to tell the story. So I made a commitment to just continue to write down every story that came to mind over those next couple of years and then start sorting them. And I pieced them together with old journals that I had and things like that. And that was a very natural writing style for me because I could preserve the moment and not try to recreate it, but I could show people that I was really feeling these things. And sometimes I feel like there is a disconnect when we hear stories that were like, yeah, but that's you're looking at the story after the fact. Like, how were you at in the moment? And I can share those because I shared the journal entry and I can show you how I felt in that moment. And I can be raw and I can be real, and then I can show you the lessons I learned after that. So I took all of them and I started organizing them, typing them into um the computer and sorting them based on themes and what was some overall message that I wanted to talk about brave moments and lessons that I had learned in life, and how were these all gonna piece together? Um, and then I just got on Fiverr and got myself an editor and sent it away. You know, it was it was very low budget, very like I didn't know anything about it, but anybody can write a book. And I think everybody has a story in them if they're willing to let go of um you know, qualifying themselves or trying to um think that they need permission to write a book, you know, all of those things are just excuses for not doing what you said you were gonna do. Um, and so you know, that the old saying where there's a will, there's a way. Yeah I was willing and I found a way.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

You brought that up uh this a couple of times today. You've talked about disqualifying yourself or being qualified and the imposter syndrome that goes along with it. For m I'd say most of us probably. Anytime we sit down and we say, hey, we're gonna write a book, uh, there's that thing in the back of our minds. It's like, well, who are you to write a book? Why is anybody gonna want to read your book? I mean, you know, the the spiritual warfare runs deep in that entire um you know process. So uh what were some of those obstacles that were hitting you? And how'd you get around something, especially something as serious as disqualifying yourself from the process? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

I I was really scared that I was gonna have an opinion that somebody was gonna call out or be like, you know, well, it's not that way, and then I'm gonna fact check you and prove it, you know. And I think that maybe that's just the the upbringing that I had, you know, being very cautious about misquoting scripture or, you know, being too um talking about God too much for the environment or not, whatever. Uh, you do get a fair bit of public criticism sometimes when you share your faith out loud, um, depending on the circles that you're in. And I've had a little bit of a um, you know, just wanting to make sure that I wasn't really I had what I had to get over really at the core of it was comparing myself to other people. That's really at the core. Um, my story versus someone else. I know people that have got much more traumatic stories than I do. But does that make my story any less worth telling? You know, that comparison is the thief of all joy, and it is going to be the low-hanging fruit and the permission that you'll try to give yourself and talk yourself out of doing stuff forever. It's never gonna go away. It's always gonna be there. So I don't know that the growth factor needs to be in um how much it keeps showing up for you, but that you are able to recognize it sooner and get over it faster. It's always gonna be there as a temptation for you not to. Um, but yeah, that those were the big things is I didn't want to um I didn't want to offend people. I don't start out offending people. But as I know, just in the grief work space, like everybody has a unique experience. And everybody is um entitled to their own experience. But even when you share yours, you're going to invite people to measure themselves against you and say, well, that was really in fact, I got feedback like that. Well, it must have been nice to have a dad like that, you know. What about the rest of us? You know, and it's like, but I didn't write this for the rest of us. I I trying to tell my story, you know. So you're always going to get that level of criticism, especially when you write personal stories like that. And when you put yourself out there, there's a vulnerability there for sure. And then not wanting to harm anybody in the process, like that's a really hard thing to do.

unknown 18:46

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

It's not hard to not harm people. What I'm saying is it's a very vulnerable thing. It can keep you from writing a story or telling your story, especially if sometimes that has pain attached to it and heartbreak.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Right, right. Um the topic, you know, just the uh the space that you're in when you're talking about uh peep you know grief and loss and how people process it in the whole nine yards. And then you add in your own history and your own processes of uh your own experiences. There is uh there's there's so much there and and there's so many sensitive turns uh in this topic. Um what do you find are some of the uh the most um uh I guess I don't want to say most popular, most common. There we go. What do you what do you think are some of the most common misconceptions about you know people how do you deal with grief and when you talk about grief and all that type of thing that you run into in not only writing the book but in doing the work that you do?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

I'll tell you it was a hard one to overcome. Um as soon as I wrote about it, yes, my dad was dad's death was the catalyst for my awareness to grief. That was my kind of, ah, whoa, hang on a second here. But it certainly didn't stop at that. Um, but then as I wrote about it, and the book isn't actually all about my dad or about my dad's death, it just happened to share that moment in time as part of my awakening and awareness to this. But even then, when I wrote the book, people still, you know, misunderstood or didn't read it. Maybe they didn't read it, maybe they just made assumptions. I don't know. But being known as like the girl whose dad died, like I didn't want to be known as that. And so um, you know, I didn't, I was hesitant to tell the story about that and how it impacted me because I didn't want that to be the anchor of how I was known, because it's so much more than that. But in grief, you know, we're only really talking about the grief we can recognize, the grief that comes from tangible losses. So that would be like the death of a person, um, the loss of a job, the like disease, um, people that are struggling with chronic illness. We understand the tangibles, the things that we grieve and we can attach that word to. Those are the things we talk about, but there's so much loss. There's this whole category of intangible loss, the loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations that people are actively grieving today, but they don't recognize it as grief because they don't have that awareness. They don't see it. No one's told them how to see that as grief. So there's a lot of misinformation around it. And um, I hope I kind of address that a little bit in that, but my work is dedicated to helping people recognize some of the silent ways they might have been grieving for their whole life and helping them kind of open their eyes to that and say, Oh, maybe that, maybe maybe if I dealt with that, things would change for me. Um did that answer your question, is that where you were asking?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, I mean, hey, there's no right or wrong answer to any of this stuff. So I appreciate You know, wherever you want to go with it. But yes, uh, for sure. That's kind of what I was wondering. Um, you know, in addition to that, you pour a ton of yourself into your writing. And so this is some very personal stuff to you. Um was there any uh uh hesitancy about that, any blowback after you put that out there? How did family react? What was the reaction you got from people who knew you when all of a sudden you went, hey, let me take all these very personal journals and put them all together in a book and then make it public?

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I didn't tell a lot of people don't get to it and already written it. No, um, I definitely I feel like I did it with with finesse because some of the stories intertwine and some of those stories are not mine to tell. You know, they impacted me, but they're not mine to tell. And so there was a way of this is what was so ground, so important to me is that we tell the emotional truth. So when I work with people, um, we have to make a commitment to total honesty with one another. Okay. So I say, all right, Rory, we we're gonna commit to being totally honest. And you're like, yeah, I'm totally honest. But here's where the nuance comes in. You might be totally honest with me about facts, but you won't be totally honest with me about emotional truth, right? And so we let go of the details. I'm like, I don't want to know what happened, I want to know how it impacted you. And those are the things that keep us out of comparison. So if I told you about um, oh, my dad died, right? And I miss him a lot, and then you tell me your dad died, and I think we're the same because we both of our dads have passed away. But maybe your relationship with your dad is completely different, which I know that it was.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

And so the impact of his death is completely different for you than it would be for me, right? And if we're focused on the dad part that we have in common and both of our dads have passed away, we'll miss each other in the connection. But if I was perhaps to tell you about the emotional time of a time that I went through where I felt sad, I felt lonely, I missed um guidance, I felt like I was alone by myself. You could probably pick any time in your life that you felt like that. So this wasn't necessarily about exposing people or using details to describe how things impacted, but to bring to light the emotional truth of how life does impact us. And that's stuff that we can all bond over because we've all felt it. Whether the details of our story are different, we have all felt those emotions. Um, so I've that was a way for me to honor the truth, but not to hurt people or tell other people's stories and really getting to the heart of the emotional truth of how life impacts us. So when I did publish it, it was surprising to my family for sure. Um, my husband still hasn't read the book to this day. And he told me he's and he and it's fine, it's not a thing at all. But he, I was like, You want to read it? And he was like, I lived it, I don't need to read it. So there was a lot of trust in my family, you know, and I uh my sisters have read it, and my brother has read it, and we all had a good read about Christmas. It it came out at Christmas time, and so my mom read some of my book uh to the family, and we all had a a great time with it. But it was very good for the family, and and we liked it. The feedback I've gotten, like criticisms and stuff, has been um just people that are hurt, you know, they didn't have that experience, so they can't relate to it and they want to know, well, that's all well and good, and you can do that if these circumstances are that way, but maybe they don't see the value in the work that I do if their circumstances are different. So, you know, it's just some people have opinions and they're entitled to them. Um, but it's been mostly good for for the most part. I've had some good feedback from it.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Good. I'm glad to hear that. You're very, very careful about the way you approach all of this information. Um, the uh the process, you know, everybody has a process, every writer has a process. And it's great to say, hey, I grabbed all my journals and right, because people kind of picture I have this big pile of journals on the table and I just started pulling stuff out of them and threw them in a pile and said, Here's my book, and I sent it off to Fiverr. And we all know that's not really what happened, you know. So um some people uh write when they are inspired and then they sit down and they write. Uh, some people get inspired, they take notes, and then they put those notes together later. Some folks say I'm gonna sit down for an hour every day and I'm gonna write 2,000 words and it's coming out no matter what, and then I'll edit them later. What was your process? Especially like you didn't have any training on this, you didn't take a course on it, you just said, I'm gonna just do this, you know, God help me, here we go. Um, what was your process on the first one?

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Well, you can't. I I have learned and for myself, I needed to stop editing myself. So I actually made a shirt that says, um, create without limits, stop editing yourself. And um we do a fair amount of that criticism and that internal monologue. And so when you're writing, it's very important that you suspend any editing until you finished creating. You can't create and edit at the same time. There's works two different parts of your brain. So giving yourself permission to just freely create and to write wherever it goes and not have to explain yourself while you're writing is really important to honor that part of the process. So, yes, I had some of that in the journal entries for sure. But then as I was writing in my reflections, I wanted to be to honor that reflective process as well and not to be like, Can I say that? You know, oh, I don't know if I can say that. So it just came out very raw and very like exactly how I felt. And then I used the editorial process and the creative language process of, well, how might I say this in a way that encapsulates the severity of it without giving the details of it, right? So, for example, one line in my book is our family has had their fair share of Hallmark movies moments and lifetime movie moments. So by saying that, every Hallmark movie that you've run through your head just went through your head, and every lifetime movie pull a drama went through your head.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Exactly. Right. And they're different.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Right. And I didn't have to go down the nitty-gritty to ex to help you understand that there's a duality there to the stories that we have and the experiences that we have. So I I just tried to do it that way of honoring the journey of that. And then if there was sensitive stuff to make sure that I cleared it with people before I, you know, shared it. Because I there's a story I tell about my sister in there, and I read that story to her first. And I was like, is there any part of this you don't want me to share? And she was, no, I to share it, you know. So there that's part of it. You have to, you know, write what you need to write and don't censor yourself, but then make sure that you're willing to be considerate of other people and gentle with other people's journey as you go through it.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Right. An important question on this podcast, and I usually get to it in one way, shape, or form, is you know, as we write our books, there's usually someone that we're writing the book to, or someone that we're picturing when we're writing the book, or someone we're writing the book for, uh, you know, that type of thing. Um, as you were putting this all together, and as you were talking about, you know, uh raising and developing, you know, brave hearts, and I mean the the powerful themes that you have in this book, uh who were you writing this book to or for?

SPEAKER_01 30:18

That's a really good question. I don't know that I really knew that when I was writing it. Um I actually found an accidental audience that I I I when I was writing it, if I had an audience in mind, it was for my peers. It was for other moms that were navigating life, right? And I thought that maybe just hearing that and the season of life that they may be in or might be in, they could relate to it. Um sharing stories of parenting and the lessons I learned from my kids. I figured it would reach that audience. I didn't expect it to reach my mom's audience, like my mom's age group and those women um that have been through those journeys of life. And I didn't, I just definitely didn't expect it to even be something they would be that interested in. So that was kind of a surprise. Um, but as I got finished with it, it really became like um like a like a healing experience for myself, you know, and a way of looking at, yeah, all this stuff did matter, you know, and whether it helps somebody else or not, that's fine. But I kept a promise to myself, which was I was gonna write a book someday. And um, I left something for my kids, and that was important to me as well, is that I was giving them this little kind of guidebook because at some point in their life they're gonna get there and they're gonna be like, I need some kind of brave and I need some kind of courage. Um, and I hope that they'll be able to see that there is proof that life is lived and that healing can happen, and it doesn't matter what happens in your life, there's always a next chapter. So Wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

All right. I appreciate that answer. And uh, you know, your your thoughtful uh response also, you know, to that. It's uh it's not always easy, you know. Sometimes we start off on one path, we end up on another. That's why we're always looking for the right path, you know, selfless plug. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

I mean, that's what I told you. I broke all the rules. I didn't have an avatar when I started it, you know. I didn't have like a story arc. I didn't have like this classical training. And when the editor gave me my my review, she was like, Are you sure you don't know how to write a book? Because, you know, she told me about these things I didn't even know about. I failed English class, I was horrible at it. But she was talking about, you know, your plot and your heroine and your, you know, the art, the story arc. And I was like, what are these new terms? I have no idea, you know, and sometimes I think that when you get into want to do something, you can get too much in your own head and making sure you check all the boxes and you lose that inspired action behind something. And you try to perform your way through it or try to make sure that everything's perfect before you get started. And uh I've just learned, or my way of doing things is doing it will teach me everything I need to know.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Beautiful. The uh the journey to raising brave hearts, then is the first book that comes out. The uh your next book was the Notice and Wonder Journal. Now, is that an homage to the uh the journals that led to the first book in the first place? Or uh, you know, where what where's the connection there and what's that book about for everybody?

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Yeah, so notice and wonder is actually an educational tool that they use a lot in the education platforms and helping kids with um being curious and learning and all of that stuff, but it's usually seen as just like two things, like notice and wonder. And I see that as like a three-step process. The and is a piece of that. So it's I want to notice what's going on, I want to be wonder about it, and how do I bring those together so that I can keep moving forward? And when I wrote that journal, it was to use that framework and that tool that I use in coaching and teaching that mindset to people and helping them notice how God is using them and wondering, you know, or noticing God and wondering how he's gonna use you. I noticed that I'm feeling really strong emotions about this and I wonder what memory is that attached to, or I wonder why that matters so much to me. Anytime we can shift the brain from being critical to curious, we win, right? And so this was an exercise. It started out as a 10-day exercise that I just did a 10-day challenge on this mindset. And I I was I was smart enough to survey people going in and then on the way out, because I was really curious, like, what is this, what does this look like? And we had some of the most meaningful conversations, um, doing these daily reflections and what people um learned and what they saw. And at the end, we had such a significant, like, I think the statistic ended up being like 75% increase in their sense of being present and feeling um like they were intentionally choosing what came next for them, right? So much of our behavior is driven by our comfort zone and what we can predict. And a lot of life goes on autopilot. And so the Notice and Wonder Journal is really designed to help people pay attention, be present, be reflective, and start to recognize some patterns about areas that they might want to change.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Nice. Wonderful. And then the third book, The Perfect Day Success Roadmap. Now, you're you're giving a talk on the perfect day uh in June. Um, and uh you're gonna be on a stage talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

I am yeah, which is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, I do this with my partner, um, my business partner, Justin Gabasi, he's a human optimization coach, and we were kind of spitballing some stuff one day. And you know, if you can feel better, then you'll think better, then you'll live better, right? Like that's the ultimate formula. And that would be the perfect day. If I could just wake up and I could feel good, I could think good, I would live good and live better. So we kind of put that into a framework, a three-part framework, and we wrote the success roadmap as a 28-day, 30-day guided process to help you feel better, think better, and live better. And we talk about um, you know, he talks about the physiological things, hydration, gut health, things that like that that affect um the way that you think and therefore your emotional state. And then I talk about how do you navigate the thinking better stage? How do you recognize feelings? What does it look like to create space and to do those healing things? Um, and then that third piece, we chose to integrate the boundaries, like how do you create a lifestyle that supports the things that you hold dear and how do you live better and intentionally with the people that you share life with? So that was our first journal, and it really just kind of walks people through exercises for mind mapping and for like a life wheel assessment, looking for areas that they need to grow in. Um, so we teach the live workshop and actually we have a four-hour masterclass that we sell on our on our website, and then we have um the guided workbook that goes with it. But um if they if someone just bought the workbook on Amazon, they would still get a lot of value out of it, even if they didn't have the course to go with it.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Nice. All right, and that's coming up in June. Yeah. So we'll be we'll be looking for that as well. Um the now, this whole uh stream of books, you know, now that you're a part of, this all started uh with the brave heart, you know, movement uh at the beginning. Um at this point, having you know written two, co-written another one, do you consider yourself an author?

SPEAKER_01 38:11

I do.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Awesome. Why? Why is it okay now? Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah, I suppose that before I would have called myself probably a writer, you know, um, because I hadn't published anything. I thought that you had to publish a book to be considered an author, you know. Um it was most a little probably more just a misunderstanding or assumptions that I had about the process. And now I would even consider, you know, I would just expand the definition quite considerably. I would have been a lot more gracious with myself. But I think it's just social status and things, and it's weird, like once you write a book, it's not, oh, it's so good that you wrote a book. It's well, were you a bestseller? And then it's well, how many books have you written? Like, you know what I mean? I don't know if you've experienced that, but you know, when I tell people I was an author, instead of being excited that you finally published your book, the conversation shifted very quickly to, well, so was it a bestseller? Oh, no, I didn't write it to be a bestseller. I did it so I could do something, you know? And then you go into the room, and the next room is, well, I've written three books. How many books have you written? You know? So it's such a slippery slope, the comparison game. And there's always going to be somebody there doing more than you, and someone doing less than you. And you really have to embrace your brave. You have to lead from your heart center, and you have to do the things that honor the things that you want to do in your life and forget the performance metrics that everyone else will want to put on you.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Yeah, I I love that on so many levels. Uh, and yes, I've experienced uh both of those things in huge, in huge quantities. So I uh I I totally get it. Um now normally we would stick with the book all the way through. We have a little bit of time left. I want to make sure that we talk about this other thing that's coming up here because you're taking all of this, your speaking and your writing, and the whole bit, and you're putting it all together and going to a whole different level of communicating uh all of that and your coaching as well, uh, with a brand new thing that's launching here pretty soon. You want to tell everybody what that is and what's coming?

SPEAKER_01 40:34

I'm keeping another promise to myself, and I am going to launch the Jessica Broadway show. It's a podcast that's multi-passionate, and lots of different conversations are happening on that platform. It's for anybody who's navigating different seasons of change, um, that want to just have a good chat about stuff that matters. Um, that maybe you want to hear me just read my book for a chapter. Maybe you want to hear my hot take on parenting, maybe you want to hear, you know, whatever squirrely idea I came up with that day. You know, this is I want it, I want the vibe to be that you pulled up a chair and we had a conversation, you know. Um, I want to grow with people. I don't want to, I didn't want to just wait till everything was perfect. In fact, the first episode isn't even perfect. None of them are. But we're finding a way to continue conversations that are meaningful to people and talking about the stuff that matters, um, and just encouraging people to be more of who they are, not less.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Love, love, love it. All right, and congratulations on that. I know it's launching, uh, and so I'm looking forward to it now. This episode is going to be released on May 14th. And so the uh podcast, however, is being released on a Monday, May 18th. So when people are hearing this, they're going to be just just days away from being able to catch this premiere of this podcast. We're putting out dates because we're holding ourselves accountable on this, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

100%. It's perfect. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

I got I got several episodes recorded and we're gonna lay them out there for you. We're gonna give you a few to listen to up front um and invite you to stick around as I grow and as the conversations grow and they change. And I want people to be able to say they were there in the beginning, you know, and that they watched it grow over time. There's nothing like being there when something gets started and watching it shape take shape over the years and remembering what it was like to be there in the beginning. So I just want to give people an opportunity to be part of that journey.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

I love it. And um just so that people can find it too. Uh I know that you know, part of your strategy was hey, even though we're gonna launch, you know, a significant amount of content and have an actual launch on the 18th, you wanted folks to be able to find it. So you've got this first episode, your intro episode is out now. So people can look this up and they can subscribe and they can uh get notifications turned on. And that way when the launch happens and all the other episodes come out, they can actually hear this and they'll know. And then they won't, you know, won't forget the date and they won't miss it. Um so folks go out and look up the Jessica Broadway show. Okay, there's only one. She's she's just that that awesome. There's only one Jessica Broadway out there doing this show. Um, and and tune in. So uh I wish you all the best with that launch, of course. And uh it sounds like you've done a lot of work and you're really ready to to knock this out of the park.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

I've done a lot of work and I can't I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the role that you've played in encouraging me to get it out there. Um I tell you, everybody needs a cheerleader and someone in their corner to whisper the truth back to them when they forget it. And I appreciate the role that you've played in helping me get. My message out there and um to keep moving forward. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Well, you're very welcome, and you're too kind. You've done a ton of work. I can't wait to see it. Um, all right. So back to the right path as we kind of wrap this up. Um, I I really like to end the podcast with the same question for everybody. Uh, and uh that's the only part that's not, you know, uh sort of natural, right? Is we have this one question. We have so many people who listen to this podcast that are aspiring authors, and they are just ready and dying to just get their book out and they're in the process and and so on. Um, so as an author, what is your best advice to authors out there who are not quite where you are yet?

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Hmm. That's a good one. Makes me think about a lot of different angles, you know. I would ask you to, I would encourage you to sit with why do you want to write the book? If it's because you want to make some money, that's great, but there will be a different strategy for that, you know, and there will be different conversations you have to have. If you make money and that's okay, but you're really doing it to keep a promise to yourself or do the thing that you never thought you could do, there's a different strategy for that. And I just that has to be one of the foundational questions that you ask yourself because all the reasons, all the reasons that you haven't already done it are probably not the real reason you haven't done it. The real reason you haven't done it yet is because you haven't decided why it's important and who benefits if you do it. Like that's a really important question to ask yourself. So um, once you figure out why you want to write it and who's gonna benefit if you do, or who you hope benefits if you do, you kind of start piecing together the peep the pieces of it. That why pulls you through to that to the end of it. Um, so that's what I would tell them. Spend some time figuring out why, if you're not already a published author and you haven't already done the thing, spend some time figuring out what it is you why you actually want to do it.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Love it, absolutely love it. All right. Um, uh folks, um Jessica Broadway, the uh speaker, uh, author, coach, mom, and uh podcaster coming out on uh May 18th. Do not miss the Jessica Broadway show coming uh to all of the top platforms out there. Uh Jessica, you've been absolutely amazing. Uh your book is fantastic. And I just uh I thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing so much of your journey uh with the people out there who I think really, really need it. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Absolutely, folks. This has been another fantastic episode of the Right Path Podcast, where the truth still matters and words still have power. This is the place for authors who know that every single page is a step forward towards finding your right path. Until next time.