We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amy Capello. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amy below.

Amy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

This isn’t something I talk about very often, but it’s a fun story and I love this question. Most coaches that I know often name their company with their own names; it makes it easy to identify them and they are their brand so it makes sense. I didn’t want to go that route and wanted to name my company after something that would inspire and really convey the heart of what I want for my clients.

One day I was doing a brain dump of words that related to my mission & vision, and the words “pure” and “joy” were on the page, but not together. They kept sticking out to me though. A day or so later, I saw a Bible verse that had both of those words in it (please stick with me if you’re not a Bible reader, this applies to everyone, promise!) and it caught my eye. The verse is James 1:2-4 (which I had to Google because I can’t memorize this stuff to save my life) – “Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

Now whether you’re someone with any kind of faith or not, this still applies to our lives. It struck me so powerfully when I read it and I’ll explain why. “PURE JOY” is unadulterated, not full of baggage, expectations, hurts, and trauma. It’s pure. I love that, and hope for that for my clients and myself. Let’s read on, pure joy comes THROUGH trials. Joy doesn’t exist because our lives are perfect, or because we have everything we want. Joy literally comes *because of* and not *in spite of* trials. Our lives are sometimes absolutely full of difficult things… I’ve personally faced divorce, being a single mom, stage 3 cancer, blending a family in a second marriage, and more. I’ve learned, the hard way, on how to find joy WITHIN those moments and a deeper joy *because* of those moments, not in spite of.

Let’s keep going, those trials and hardships are a testing of our faith. If you’re someone who subscribes to a particular religion or spirituality, that may be directly related to those beliefs. It may also be a representation of just having faith in general – faith that things are going to be ok, faith that you are on the right track, faith that the world is supporting you and your good. Either way, the testing of those things can bring about perseverance, as you struggle, learn, grow, push yourself, and find a higher version of you.

Lastly, and this is just the cherry on the top of the whole process – you are mature, complete, and not lacking anything. This is what I want for my clients. This is what I want for me, and my family and friends. We may go through the hard stuff, we may be tested, we may struggle to find the pure joy in the valleys of life, we may feel like our faith in the good things is being tested, but man, if we can get through it – in the end, we are mature, complete, and lack nothing. Damn, doesn’t that just bring it all home? When I read that, I knew immediately that Pure Joy was going to be the name of my company.

I hope for exactly this for my clients – pure joy as they go through the hard things (people hire me because they want change – and change isn’t easy most of the time), testing of their faith (knowing that if they stick with it, keeping faith that it will make lifelong positive changes in the end), and in the end, they are mature, complete, and lacking nothing (reaping the benefits of all of their hard work and effort, lacking nothing that they hoped for from coaching and investing in their own life improvements). This is it, this is the good part.

And that, my loves, is why I named the company Pure Joy Life Coaching.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Amy Capello & I’m the Owner of Pure Joy Life Coaching! I am a Life Balance Strategist, meaning that I help my clients strategize ways to bring balance into their lives and reclaim their joy. My clients are often over-worked, over-scheduled, over-committed, over-burdened, and over it with trying to keep up with all the things. Being all things to all people all the time – it’s just too much. I was there at one point as well, a single mom of a toddler, working full time as an Assistant Principal at the largest school in the state, with a staff of over 30 people. Plus multiple volunteer programs I helped with and I was a Board of Directors for a local organization as well, cause you know, I had a ton of time and energy to give (nope, I just was good at acting). I see myself in a lot of my clients and I know the stress of living a life on auto-pilot, not feeling like there’s anything real you’re working towards, you’re just keeping the ship afloat day after day. Making sure the world doesn’t fall apart so you can complete one more chore and count the days until your week off in a few months. It’s exhausting, and not why we exist on this planet. Life is more than burnout and productivity as we know it. That’s where I come in to play, to help break people out of that constant spiral and find a new way of bringing balance and joy into their lives. I offer several programs for my clients to best meet their needs – one on one coaching, a travel program where we travel together & coach on the trip (called Joy Journeys), a VIP Day offering where we can knock out your goals in one day (best for those with timeline crunches & busy schedules), and I occasionally offer group masterclasses & workshops & retreats as well.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I have had to dig deep into some of the lessons I learned growing up around productivity and my value. I have the best parents and they did an amazing job raising me (if I do say so myself lol). Work ethic was strongly enforced in my childhood home and it was something both of my parents valued highly. It’s a great thing, and I try to instill this for my child now as well. However, for the perfectionist Type A that I am, it eventually evolved into this unhealthy achievement addiction. I needed to tell everyone about everything I did, every day. “I cleaned the dishes, mopped the floor, did every single load of laundry, mowed the grass, and bought groceries – all before noon today”. If I didn’t have someone to tell, I posted it on FB so I could have an audience. (Ew, just admitting this in writing is so gross, but it’s my real truth and I own that). I needed constant validation that I was doing well, and doing well was represented in what I accomplished and what I achieved. A few life-changing events have changed my perspective entirely on this matter. One of them was having a son. I was now a mom, and I had to reconcile my productivity with being fully present with my child. Ouch. I’ll be brutally honest, what ended up happening was that I just survived in a constant state of guilt. If I did all the things around the house and for life, guilt that I wasn’t a good mom. If I didn’t do those things (or even just did half of them that I’d normally do), guilt that I wasn’t doing life the way I should do life and I was failing at that. Honestly, it didn’t solve anything, it just made it harder for me to achieve the way I wanted to achieve and I couldn’t wear any badge anymore. No badges for over-productivity because I needed to be a (tired) mom, and no badges for being an awesome mom because I needed to get things done.
Damn. That’s a rock and a hard place.
And I’ll be transparent with you – I couldn’t maintain either. I couldn’t do both. I was running on fumes and showing up fully in either category of my life was nothing but impossible. I was faced with either feeling like a failure in all aspects of life, or adjust my expectations and my perspective. It sounds easy, but it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I had to change the way I saw my value – and that’s deep. I won’t go into the full story right now, but suffice it to say that I faced a lot of my own values, perspectives, deeply engrained habits of how I lived my life, and adjusting them even a smidgen required me to show up and keep the faith through the process. It wasn’t easy, and it took a very long time, and I still face them – I still catch myself listing to my husband all the things I did in a day to earn his respect and appreciation. But now, I notice that I’m doing it, and I thank myself first, giving myself the respect I deserve instead of seeking it from elsewhere.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I’ve discussed with a lot of business owners about pivoting. More often than not, businesses have to pivot. One fellow small business owner even said that he thinks the key thing that keeps businesses open is their ability to pivot (take covid as an example). Those that survived were most often those that were able to pivot.

Being a new business, I felt like I was pivoting every other day – figuring out what exactly I could do to best serve my clients, how I could meet their needs, what were their deep needs that maybe they didn’t even realize they needed, etc. I still pivot, but being 3 years into business, I’ve got a much better handle on the directions I need to go and I’ve had time to see what my clients want. Getting feedback from your clients & customers can be the biggest game changer in actually helping them – doing what it is that helps them the most, instead of what you want the most. The real key is finding the balance of both of those things. That takes time, the ability to take hard feedback, listening to your clients, and being willing to pivot.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.purejoylifecoaching.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purejoylifecoaching/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purejoylifecoaching
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycapello/

Image Credits
Photos by A Different Light Photography