What Holds Us Back?

So many of us are held back by beliefs that we’re too much, or not enough, to pursue our dreams and passions and make them reality.

We absorb messages about being too old, too fat, too skinny, too white, too Black, too smart, too dumb, just too much, but what if we said “eff it” and went after our dreams anyway?

Speaker, model, and wellness advocate Jetty Nieuwenhuis believes now is the perfect time to create the roadmap to the future you’ve always deserved. Plus, she tells India about the stories she’s rewritten in her own life as a result of her rebrand with Flaunt Your Fire, and why it is never too late to choose who you want to be.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

• Why Jetty kept the Trujetty name through a major career shift

• How to cultivate your F*ck It Factor

• Being an influencer over 40

• Why it’s never too late to make the impossible possible

Changing Up Your Personal Brand

Jetty Nieuwenhuis got her start in health and nutrition coaching but pivoted to speaking, modeling, and working as a brand partner. Throughout her career, though, she’s kept the brand Trujetty.  Today, as CEO of Trujetty, she uses her personal stories of invisible illness–bulimia, Lyme Disease, and depression–to help women wake up from a life on autopilot and unapologetically go after their desires. Rebelling against the perfectly curated influencer image, complete with unattainable standards, she focuses on the real contradictions of life, like fashion over 40, beauty without the heavy edit, and having enough while still wanting more.

You Can Change Your Mind

Jetty chose the name Trujetty for her business in part because she wanted to be easily searchable–North Americans struggle to google Nieuwenhuis–but more importantly because she wants to be honest and raw in her business, on her Instagram, and in the brands she partners with.

She had been drawn to nutrition and health coaching because it fascinated her and she had struggled with it herself for so long. But her history could also make it difficult to work with clients.

And she realized she loved being in front of the camera and front and center in her business.

Rather than scrap the business name and start over, Jetty opted to work with Flaunt Your Fire to transition her existing brand and evolve Trujetty into the business she truly wanted.

On the Flaunt Your Fire podcast, Jetty told India, “I discovered so much about me, about who I am and who I pretended to be for other people. And that gave me the courage to just start doing things [differently] and live my life.”

Making the shift from nutrition and health coach to being an influencer and all that entails, from partnering with brands, to modeling, to speaking, was a huge change for Jetty but also not.

“I still had the same opinions, same values. So the shift was big and at the same time it wasn’t.”

She says that being a coach gave her the courage and confidence to move in the direction of what she really wanted, from being “a farm wife and a mom” to a model and influencer, even if coaching was just a step on her journey.

“It’s okay to change your mind and to shift. And you are evolving every day...and that’s okay.”

Though makeup, skincare and fashion are not new to Jetty. She’s had an eye for beauty and style since she was a child.

She then trained as a makeup artist in her twenties and has been collecting designer clothes for years, mixing them with less expensive pieces in her wardrobe and putting her stamp on minimalist style.

Keeping her brand explicitly aligned with her value of truth is vitally important to Jetty and she only shares products she genuinely loves or uses.

The F*ck It Factor

Jetty’s career shift came after the age that most people think of when they hear the word ‘influencer.’

Jetty’s answer to the real or imagined voices that tell you you’re too old or it’s too late is what she calls the F*ck It Factor.

She says it’s born out of taking in messages from society, institutions or your family about what you’re not supposed to do and doing it anyway.

She also cultivates a practice of writing down her negative self-talk and spinning it into something positive, and of being radically honest in public about things like getting Botox.

The F*ck It Factor “is doing the things that you really want to do, but that you also maybe thought you weren’t good enough for, or you are afraid of. Because yeah, I’m afraid of things, but I still do it and I get through it.”

Older Women Are Worthy

The beauty and fashion industries can be notorious for a lack of age diversity in their ad campaigns and in the influencers they partner with.

India asks Jetty to share how that plays out in her content on Instagram or at speaking engagements and brand partnerships.

Jetty says it’s important for brands to realize that older women have money to spend on their products, but only seeing young women in advertising can make women feel unworthy, and that a lack of diversity is a problem not just in showing a range of ages, but across the spectrum of age, size, race and more. It’s a conversation that she’s continued inside Pause on the Play® The Community.

“I really want to be part of that revolution that is showing a lot more older models and models that don’t have the perfect size...everything, like,  just real people.”

She says she is starting to see more brands partnering with women from a wider range of ages. But she says she still gets messages from people saying they don’t feel that a product or even a career is for them because of their age or other things they see as imperfections that disqualify them.

India adds that the people you see in ad campaigns have had a whole gamut of professionals working with that image, from hair and makeup to lighting and professional editing. Features get smoothed away under makeup, tailoring, lighting and editing software.

By the time you’re looking at a finished image, “what we are comparing ourselves to is not a real human. That person does not look like that.”

Jetty says “Yeah, I don’t look like that every day too...There’s just so much behind [it] to get that perfect image, and you better not compare yourself to it because I have done that and it just makes you feel small and unworthy.”

It’s Never Too Late

One of Jetty’s guiding principles in her life is that it’s never too late to choose who you want to be as a human.

“It was such an important part of my journey, because for most of my life I was doing things that other people wanted me to do.”

Part of the F*ck It Factor, she says, is standing up for yourself and making your desires in life known, and continuing to stand even when other people judge you.

“I think everybody can achieve that at any age...You just feel you’re done. I’m done with this. I want to do things my way.”

India says she wants to acknowledge that there was not a single defining moment when everything shifted for Jetty, but that she has seen Jetty take many small actions over time, from her branding to the conversations she has with family and friends, that have added up to big changes.

One of Jetty’s big shifts was to move away from her husband’s farm part-time. The move has had significant positive impacts on her mental wellbeing, on her relationship with her husband, and in her relationships with her children.

“It just really shifted my negative story of saying to myself, “how can this farm girl create this whole new life, the whole new career?...Ever inside I moved things really started to shift in my life, in my mind of how things are possible.”

How Jetty Flaunts Her Fire:

“Flaunting My Fire means being really me and showing that to the world and discovering things about myself that I did not really know….Flaunting My Fire made the impossible possible.”

Ready To Lead Like Jetty? Join Us:

From Implicit To Explicit: Leading Through Your Values Masterclass is a framework to get clear on what matters to you as a human and how it informs the way you show up professionally.

Connect With Jetty Nieuwenhuis:

• TruJetty

• Instagram: @TruJetty

• LinkedIn: Jetty Nieuwenhuis