Do you ever feel like the business world just wasn’t built for you?

If the strategies that everyone else swears by feel draining or downright impossible, this episode is your invitation to pause, realign, and find your own way.

In this conversation, I’m joined by Emma-Louise Parkes, founder of The Ambitious Introvert and the brilliant mind behind what she calls the “quiet power effect.” Together, we explore what it really means to be an introverted entrepreneur in a noisy digital world—and how to succeed on your own terms without sacrificing your energy.

Emma-Louise shares her journey from air traffic controller to coach, how she discovered her introversion later in life, and why self-awareness is the key to building a business that actually sustains you.

This episode is a soft but fierce call to remember: you don’t have to do it like everyone else. Your way is the right way for you.

In this episode, we explore:

• When business strategies aren’t built for your energy (03:20)
• The identity shift of discovering you’re an introvert (07:13)
• How to navigate extroverted spaces as an introverted entrepreneur (18:27)
• Why authenticity is magnetic (30:15)
• The Five B’s of Rest: a framework for sustainable success (42:45)

This episode is a gentle but empowering guide for ambitious introverts who want more energy, more ease, and more alignment in business and life.

You can also watch this discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/W2Uzzzx5dX8

Connect with Emma-Louise Parkes

Check out the podcast: https://theambitiousintrovert.com/podcast  

Join the newsletter: https://theambitiousintrovert.com/newsletter  

Mentioned in this episode:

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[00:01:13] Welcome to Deeply Rested, the podcast that helps people doing good work in the world take incredibly good care of themselves. I'm your host, retired therapist, and disillusioned business coach, Megan Meson. I'm on a mission to help people like you unlearn the rules that keep you trapped in self-doubt so that you can recover from burnout, and finally become deeply rested if you enjoy today's show. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast and join our weekly newsletter@deeplyrested.com slash newsletter. Now it's time for the show.

[00:02:13] Maegan: I mean, we were having the loveliest chat for 10 minutes and then we were like, oh wait, we should hit record.

[00:02:57] It was random. So I turn up on the first call and everyone is talking about marketing, they're talking about funnels, they're talking about lead magnets, they're talking about posting three times a day on Instagram, which was the optimum then, they're talking about doing live workshops, they're talking about all these things, and I just sat there and I just felt exhausted listening to them and I was don't know if I can do this. I legit almost messaged the coach and said, no, give me my money back, this is not for me and it was because the amount of stimulus and the things they were talking about felt like they were just going to take so much energy from me. So that was my, I can't do this.

[00:03:44] Emma-Louise: So bear in mind, I was still employed full time at that point. I was an air traffic controller here in London, a job that I'd done for 17 years and I sat there and I was like, how can I control airplanes in the busiest sky, most complex airspace in the world, but I'm freaking out about posting on Instagram. What is wrong with me was my first thought and then it was this realization of I'm freaking out about Instagram because it's new and it feels uncomfortable. I'm not familiar, it's something I've got to learn. Controlling airplanes is something I've been doing day in and day out. Like it feels easy. And as an introvert, I think that is such a big thing. The expenditure of energy when something is new and unfamiliar and we're pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone is far higher than when we're familiar with something, even if that task actually seems more draining.

[00:04:42] Emma-Louise: Oh yes.

[00:04:50] Emma-Louise: I didn't have a name for it until probably 2016, 17, by which time I'd have been 37. So, quite late in life, but I had never worked for a company that tested Myers Briggs or anything like that as part of, you know, onboarding. I was always very aware of my energy needs. I remember when I was a student, I studied full time and I had two part time jobs and on a Friday, I didn't start work until 5:30 and that day, I just sat on the sofa and vegetated and didn't want to see anyone, talk to anyone, and that was, I, looking back, I can see that was my recharge time. And then my first job out of college, I was a flight attendant, and I would go to all these amazing locations, I, you know, I'd never really travelled before, I remember being in, Orlando and places like that with, you know, these amazing crew, and we would go out, and, I had this great night out and then the next night people are like, let's go out again. And I would just be like, oh my god, I need to eat pizza in bed and watch HBO and do nothing. So I was always aware of this. When I spend energy, I need to recoup it maybe differently to other people, but it wasn't until my mid-to-late 30s that I had a word for it and knowing oh, this will make sense.

[00:06:44] Emma-Louise: Listened to a podcast which I believe was about Tim Ferriss but I couldn't promise, with Susan Cain. And they were talking about, obviously introversion, because that's her thing, she'd written the book Quiet, and Tim Ferriss was explaining that he's an introvert as well, and they were just talking about some of the traits, and how it presents for them, and how they feel about things, and I just couldn't stop listening. I was like, this makes so much sense, this is me, I have to get this book, there's no way that I'm not an introvert,and then I took the Myers Briggs, and it came up INFJ, and I read the description of INFJ, and I cried. Because I was like, oh, I actually exist and the strange thing with that was, I have a really good male friend, and the second that I took that and I read it, and it said INFJ like 0.1 percent of the population or whatever it is, and I sent him the test and I said, just take this test and tell me what your four letters are. And about 15 minutes later he came back and he said, INFJ, why? And I was like, I knew it... and I saw then I could start to see the characteristics in people.

[00:08:32] Emma-Louise: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:42] Emma-Louise: For me, it was a very empowering one and I know that's not always the way and, you know, you said the word label, which a lot of people see as a negative thing, but I believe that we have the choice to adopt a label however we want and we can go, oh, I'm an introvert, so therefore I can't do anything. I'm an introvert, therefore I need to just sit on my own and not be with people and, you know, use it as an excuse. But for me, it was like, I'm an introvert. That's an actual thing. This is great. It means that there are other people that are this actual thing too. It means there are resources out there. I can read about it. I can learn about it. I can start to understand more ways to really manage my energy.

[00:09:26] Emma-Louise: Oh, very much.

[00:10:51] Emma-Louise: Exactly that, and I was already a coach by that point, just not in the online space, and I was a coach and trainer in my full time job as well, so personal development was a big part of who I was, it was a big part of how I already supported people. I truly believe that the more we can understand ourselves, and the more we can understand our clients and help them understand themselves, the more successful any kind of coaching relationship will be. So I was already very aware of how the use of language can impact our success or, you know, growth mindset and all of that and this just added another layer as well because it's like, oh, people may be an introvert and they may be trying all these productivity hacks for extroverts, or they may be, you know, seeing, oh, so and so's doing it this way. So I'm going to do that, which is going to completely drain them. So yeah, it did, it added another layer, it expanded everything and it added a layer of nuance and what can I say? I love some nuance.

[00:12:33] Maybe entrepreneurship isn't for me. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe it's not going to work out for me, but that is really just an invitation to find a more nuanced approach to understanding who you are so that you can then connect with other people who operate in a similar way as you. I think that nuance... that feels really important, right? So for you, it was connecting to introversion, connecting to Myers Briggs. You now had a new map and you could use this new map to find other people and other spaces and other resources that aligned with who you are emotionally, spiritually, energetically in a way that this group program, for example, did not. How did you navigate that map? What did the journey look like for you from the group program in 2019 to discovering your Myers Briggs and your introversion to finding spaces that felt more aligned and helpful? What was that journey like for you?

[00:14:12] And one of the things I'm extremely grateful for, now, and this was 2019, she said, let's focus on LinkedIn growth. So I've been growing LinkedIn for a long time. And obviously now it's kind of the place to be, which is good, but she tailored it in a way that didn't feel generic and I realized then that one-on-one coaching was going to be very important for me. I love to coach one on one as well. It's my main offering in my business. So there was that aspect. And then also the intentionality of if I did join a group, being really intentional about the space. How many people are in the group? Looking at testimonials to see what people were in the group before because I could see in hindsight in the other program, a lot of very extroverted people. There was a lot of energy that didn't align well with mine and I remember joining a brand program and when I said in the introduction, introverts and highly sensitive entrepreneurs, as I used to say, then I think there were 10 people in there and eight of them were like, that's me. So it felt just very different rather than like you say, butting against people, it felt very much oh, I've come home to my people.

[00:16:36] Emma-Louise: Totally, and you make a great point. I remember joining a membership earlier on that was for introverts and highly sensitive people, and I thought, this is great! I'm going to be surrounded by my people, and when I got in there, it had a very low vibe. It can be! Like, you know, and again, that's the nuance of introversion doesn't mean,we're anxious and we're shy and we're socially awkward and all these things, but in that group particularly, people liked to use their introversion and sensitivity to be stuck and stay where they are, and you can get that with any label,and in anything, right, but of course it's amplified when you have a group of 50, 60 people that are all like that, so,

[00:18:23] Emma-Louise: I think it comes back to that nuance, like we discussed. It's recognizing that you can be around people of all energetic types. You can be around, you know, the group of extroverts, you can be in like, even really bro y type energy, or you can be around the kind of, victim mode, poor me people. It's the nuance of, I can be around these people, and I don't have to be like them. I don't have to do it the way they are doing it. And I think where, especially a lot of my clients that are very sensitive, very empathic would come into business with a skill. They have a lot of experience offline. They're experts in their field at what they do, but they've never built a business and they hear extroverted Mr. Bro Marketer going, you need to do this with such authority. They go, oh my gosh, I need to do that. That's the only way to do it. And I think it's the nuance of Yeah, Mr, extroverstsy bro marketer, he probably knows something. There is probably some truth in what he's saying,and it will work, because marketing is marketing, right?

[00:20:28] Honor your nuance by being really clear about what your limits are and what your needs are. So when you step into a group that's run by maybe a high energy extrovert, that can be okay if there is room for you in that group to do things a little bit differently.That's been a huge learning curve for me over the last eight years of kind of playing in this space is I only want to pay coaches, group program leaders, one on one or group settings. I only want to pay someone who can really see and honor who I am and who can hold space for me to do things a little bit differently than they're doing things. I think it's a bad idea to sign up to work with someone who's really different from you and thinks that their way is the only right way. That's ooh, such a recipe for disaster. So I really appreciate you naming that, you need to be able to hold yourself steady when you are in spaces with people who don't really get you energetically. You have to be able to hold yourself steady, hold your own boundaries and have the courage to be able to make a different choice. You have to choose option B when the other 30 people in your program are choosing option A. For me, that takes a lot of courage. What about for you?

[00:22:43] Maegan: No, it sounds terrible.

[00:23:45] Maegan: Whoa. What a bold moment. It was so bold. I love that you looped your business into it too. It was just like a really like one, two punch moment, right? No, I'm definitely not going to do that and also let me tell you about my business in the process. I mean, it's such a boss move.

[00:24:33] Maegan: Yes. Oh, I feel that so deep and I really do appreciate the courage that it takes in these moments to hold ourselves steady and to set really clear boundaries. This is such a great example of that, right? To be like, the guy, I'm sure he meant well, you know, I'm sure that in his mind and actually, this can lead us to another thing I want to talk to you about, which is misunderstandings that we have societally about introversion. Because in his mind, he was probably like, oh, this woman's just shy. She needs someone to bring her out of her shell. You know, I'm going to be that person. I'm going to give her the encouragement that she needs to come out to dinner. He misunderstood something fundamentally about who you are and you said, that is so conditioned into us as introverts. We've been dealing with that bullshit our whole lives, you know, of people trying to be kind, but actually they just don't understand that we need something different than them and that's fine. So you almost got hooked into that old response pattern that we're all vulnerable to. You almost got hooked in, but then you're like, you shifted into a more powerful position that allowed you to say thanks but no thanks, and here's why. You educated him in the process and that clarity you were able to communicate with really, it sounds like, helped him understand that there was nothing wrong with you.

[00:26:57] Maegan: So, so bold. I love a powerful, ambitious, introverted, female identified person who can just walk into a room and say, this is who I am. This is what I'm doing. And it took me a long time to learn this lesson, but I think for a long time, I was really afraid that if I didn't show up to all of the things, I used to do a lot more group stuff like you're describing, like big trips and conferences, and I don't do as many anymore because I don't like them. But when I did do them, I was always afraid that if I didn't show up to everything, I wasn't going to get value from this thing that I had paid for. Nobody was going to notice me. I wasn't going to make these important connections that I was there to make

[00:28:51] Emma-Louise: We have a name for that here at the Ambitious Introvert.

[00:28:54] Emma-Louise: It's the quiet power effect. What you are describing, when ambitious introverts can step into their quiet power, it's by harnessing their introverted traits and really owning it. You become more interesting, you become more magnetic. You're almost like an enigma,

[00:29:15] Emma-Louise: People love an enigma, and they love a magnetic type of confidence.I remember a client. early in my business saying to me that the reason she signed up is we got on the sales call and she said i had a calm confidence and that really stuck with me i was like that's great because that's exactly what i would want to portray because i'm obviously not going to show up to a sales call you know like extroverted or frantic or trying to you know convince people to work with me or anything. I'm just going to show up and be myself, but I think that gave her the confidence then... exactly what you were describing in a big room. You don't have to be the loudest or the boldest person but you have to be authentic and you have to be in integrity with yourself.

[00:31:13] Emma-Louise: That makes me so happy, you know I was chatting with a client earlier today who is also a coach and over the last few months we've worked on her human design, but really her stepping into what she authentically wants to do. And that has meant really niching down quite a lot from what she was offering before, but her own in that is what, her zone of genius is, that is what lights her up. That is what she wants to do. But yet this client has really stepped into her authenticity and she's recognised there's a small subset of people that I love to support that is what I do. I love to do and in making that energetic shift, she's had two former clients from years ago come back round and say, hey, I noticed you're offering this now. That's exactly what I need and so that's people that were already in her orbit and she's like, I think it's because I'm so aligned and being authentic about what I do. They wouldn't have come back at another time, but now I'm owning it. They're magnetized.

[00:33:46] Emma-Louise: It's so true. I do think there's a responsibility for me growing a brand around ambitious introverts. I think there's a responsibility for any coach to walk their talk anyway, but for me in particular, if I'm saying to clients, do this or try this or do this for your energy and I'm not doing it, that's hugely out of integrity usually I'm doing those things with bells on, on steroids, I'm telling clients, you know, be careful with notifications, make sure you've got a very good switch off time from business, whereas I have two separate phones, there's no way anything's getting through to me outside of business hours, cause I've got an actual different phone, which, a lot of people are like, what, that's so extreme, and I'm like, but it works. It works for me and what kind of role model, leader, example, not just publicly, but energetically, would I be if I'm like, doomscrolling at 10:30 at night in bed and saying to clients, you know, don't do that.

[00:35:23] Emma-Louise: Yeah.

[00:36:01] Teach that. Hold that space for people. So just like taking a little pause here for people listening. Can you do that examination in your own business, in your own life? Where are you maybe a little bit out of integrity, and instead of beating yourself up about it, cause that's not what we're suggesting. Instead of beating yourself up about it, can you get really curious about what might actually be in integrity for you. And how would your life and business look different if you showed up in that alignment? What would be different? What would change? According to Emma Louise, you might experience the quiet power effect as you make those changes. You might find that things get a little bit easier and you become more magnetic. You are calling in more of the people. Who is the right fit for the work that you're doing? That's what I'm taking from this conversation so far, but Emma Louise, let me check in. Does that resonate for you? Would you add, edit, or change anything about what I just said?

[00:37:40] Maegan: I totally agree. That's such great advice. I have another question for you,so, you know, listeners, hopefully all of you listening will one day start doing more podcast interviews yourself because I for one want to hear more conversations on podcasts, conferences, whatever, fill in the blank,with more sensitive introverted people who live in the nuance, people who live in the depths, like these are the conversations that I'm here for. When you are doing lots of podcast interviews, you often come up with this one sheet. That's an easy way to say to other podcast hosts, hey, here's the topics that I talk about, and here's a whole list of questions you can ask me and that's an easy way to just let people know, this is who I am, this is what I can talk about. So I was looking this morning Emma Louise at your one sheet of questions that you can ask Emma and I have already connected before this so we knew we were just going to dive in and see what happened... There were a couple of questions on your one sheet that were really curiosity invoking for meso I want to pivot here at the end and just ask you a couple of the questions on your sheet would that be okay with you?

[00:38:56] Maegan: I looked at them and I was like, ah, we're just going to chat. Like, let's just see what happens. But there were just a few that I put a little star next to and I was like, I want to know the answer to this question. Okay. So the first question is, can you discuss the place of the ambitious introvert in the current digital era and how it differs from traditional business?

[00:40:16] Maegan: I am putting a pin in that to have you back in the future to just have a whole episode about that if you're open to it. Um, cause I would love to just like really dig in deep about like what... hopefully this episode has really helped you identify as an ambitious introvert if you didn't already identify in that way and if you did I hope that this conversation is giving you that experience of feeling really deeply seen and known and that you end this episode feeling Okay, I'm like Megan and Emma Louise, there are more people like me out there and I can do whatever I want.

[00:41:40] Emma-Louise: I'm down for that, and the cat probably will be too, if that's okay.

[00:42:04] Emma-Louise: She doesn't have any makeup.

[00:42:12] Emma-Louise: She's like, I'm not available for this conversation.

[00:42:16] Emma-Louise: Yeah.

[00:42:42] Emma-Louise: I can. We have a framework for this at The Ambitious Introvert, which I will tell you very briefly. It's the five Bs. So it's making sure that we are resting our brain, resting our body, that we're creating boundaries, that we are belonging, and also that we are being. So, our brain rest has obviously been switching off, being detached, being in nature, taking time to be creative. Our body is looking after ourselves, prioritising our sleep, our nutrition, our movement, being comfortable, not having labels and seams sticking in us because we hate that as introverts, The boundaries piece. Whether that's boundaries that we set for ourselves, energetic boundaries, digital boundaries, physical boundaries, personal boundaries. The belonging we talked about... Being an introvert is not about spending all of our time on our own,we need deep connections, we need nourishing conversations, and that is part of our rest. So, belonging, spending time with the right people, and balancing that with spending time alone and then, being. So, being... And that is, you know, allowing ourselves the space to reflect, whether that's through meditation, any kind of spiritual practice and just allowing ourselves to be in that moment. And those five together, I think self care often gets this fluffy kind of, I'm going to take a bath and light a candle and, you know, that's great. I love a bath and I love a candle, but there's so much more to it and I've seen with clients again and again, where they say, but I don't understand because I'm taking time on my own but I still feel tired, and sometimes then they're actually missing connection, or their time on their own is still interrupted by notifications and scrolling.

[00:44:35] Emma-Louise: I love it.

[00:44:37] Emma-Louise: Originally called the five B's of rest.

[00:44:42] Emma-Louise: I could probably do something better, but it feels like it's, it does what it says on the tin.

[00:45:33] Emma-Louise: Absolutely, so probably the best place is the website. It's again, very imaginatively called theambitiousintrovert. com. From there you can find details of the work that we do. You can find the link to join the newsletter. You can find the link to the podcast, which it's almost five years old now, so there's a lot of episodes to dive into as an introvert,including yours, which will be coming up soon.

[00:45:56] Emma-Louise: Yeah, because we're recording that soon. so that's probably the best place to connect with me or on LinkedIn where I am, slash Emma Lou Parks.

[00:46:11] Emma-Louise: So my main offering is one to one, as we are recording this, I am just fleshing out relaunching the mastermind. So that will be coming, but the one-on-one coaching that I do is very holistic. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs, but also a lot of executives, and it's really looking at the big picture of where their energy is going. So whether they're building the right business, what is their life vision? Are they living in the right place? Whether it is tidying up boundaries, recognizing patterns in themselves that are causing energy drain, whether it's identity issues, whether it's the wrong actions or thoughts that aren't serving them. It really is a deep dive, because I work with people for a minimum of six months, into owning their energy, really understanding where those leaks are and empowering them to be able to plug them so that they can reach their potential.

[00:47:21] Emma-Louise: To be continued. Mimi and me, can't wait. Can't wait to see you again.

[00:47:28] Emma-Louise: Thank you. Take care. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Deeply Rested. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love to invite you to join the deeply Rested Weekly newsletter. You can sign up at deeply rested.com/newsletter. I hope to meet you in my inbox very soon.