A Breakfast With Nicky Unsworth

After the huge success of our ‘An Evening With…’ events where two Juice Academy apprentices interview a successful entrepreneur, we decided to start ‘A Breakfast With…’ for the early risers!

For our first ‘A Breakfast With…’ event, we interviewed Nicky Unsworth, the CEO of BJL, a multi-award winning advertising and marketing agency. Nicky was interviewed by two of our digital marketing apprentices, Dan Halsall (Manchester Airport Group) and Claire McDivitt (Lazerian). Claire and Dan are both apprentices in Cohort 25 and were both extremely keen to interview Nicky to learn more about her career journey. We started off the morning with networking and a delicious and healthy breakfast provided by one of our guest speakers, Jeanette Jackson at the Manchester Stress Institute.

BJL works with clients including The Co-Operative Bank, Subaru Europe and Craghoppers and has a reputation for building creative and strategic solutions for its clients. In 2004, Nicky was part of the team which performed a management buy-out of the agency and sold to global marketing group, Dentsu Aegis earlier this year.

Nicky spoke about her career, ambitions and work ethic. One value that Nicky spoke about consistently through interview was authenticity. She said that the best advice she has been given is to be authentic and that is something she has built into her values. She also highly values a happy and healthy team and spoke about her love for exercise and yoga and the importance of having a work and life balance and encouraging her team to also have this balance.

When Nicky was asked what she would advise young people who are looking to start a creative and digital role, she responded, “Exactly what you guys are doing now, getting out and talking to different people from the industry. Listen and learn, talk to people and don’t ever be too worried about making mistakes.”

Thank you to Nicky for taking the time to provide our apprentices, employers and friends, insights into your incredible journey and to BJL for allowing us to use a wonderful room.