The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Business with Chelsea Espinoza

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:16)
Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with my co-host Tullio Siragusa and our special guest today. And so we're going to talk about emotional intelligence, and it's increasingly recognized as a competitive advantage in business. According to Talent Smart Research, 90 percent of top performers score high in emotional intelligence. And the World Economic Forum consistently ranks emotional intelligence among the most in-demand workplace skills. So today, we explore what it means to redefine success from the inside out, and why emotional intelligence may be the key to building performance that does not come at the expense of well-being. And Tullio, why don't you kick us off here and introduce our guest today. You'll have to hit that mute, unmute button now before we get.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:10)
Yes. Okay, so I was going to test to see if everybody could read my lips. So we're excited today to have Chelsea Espinoza. She's the founder and CEO of Road To Jubilee.
And a Quality of Life coach, consultant and speaker with a background spanning 20 years in executive leadership and interior design. Chelsea understands the pressures of high performance, environments and the personal cost of ignoring emotional, mental and physical well-being. She partners with driven professional women and forward thinking organizations to redefine what success looks like from the inside out. Her work challenges outdated systems that reward exhaustion and instead centers on a radical idea. True success is quality of life. Through her coaching, Chelsea helps women question invisible rules, reset boundaries and redesign how they show up. So success is no longer built on overextension, but on emotional intelligence and self-trust. Chelsea, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. I'm so excited to have someone who is the anti-hustle culture on the show.

**Chelsea Espinoza** (2:22)
That is me. Even though I do hustle, it's about figuring a little bit more out of how to balance our hustle. So I come to you first as a human, and second as someone who has been in the workforce since I was 15 I come from a family of workers, of small business owners who really invested the thought of being a good hard worker. So when I was a teenager, it was just not even an option for me not to find a job. I remember when I was 15, I lied on one of my first job applications because I wanted to go to work for a large retail corporation and I wasn't old enough. I was that girl on high school that showed up with my heels on and my cute little outfits on because after school, I was going to go to work and my cute little briefcase and everything. I started out really early in the workforce and subsequently, I went to college, went to interior design school and I became a designer, but not before I became a single mom. I ended up being a mother and a father to a young person that I was 100 percent responsible for. Interior design ended up being this place where I could create a flexible schedule unlike I could if I was just working in an office or a typical corporate company. What I found was the beauty in working with other moms whose kids were in school. I would have this schedule where I'd take my daughter to school, I'd pick her up and do her homework with her. I was working, she'd have her snack, I'd be working sometimes after she went to bed, I'd be working. But it was a really important, crucial thing that I needed to incorporate into balance, for lack of a better word, to find harmony in my work life and my personal needs. So fast forward a couple of years, I get married and we become a family of two and to a family of six.
At the time, I own my own company and I thought, oh my gosh, this is not sustainable. I can't own a company and run a family. When I got married, my step kids were all teenagers and my daughter was 10 So I decided to join a firm. In that firm is where I grew significantly in my skill set, in my customer interactions, in dynamics like husband and wife. I ended up becoming an accomplished communicator. Because I was not only creating interiors for people, I was navigating these complex dynamics between husband and wife, decision-makers and what did that look like? Was that the husband? Was that the wife? Who held the financial strings? All working around what people liked and disliked in their own home. Often, I became a mediator into the couple dynamics.