Gemma Hurlstone / The person behind Calm Back with Gem
Before I tell you
how I think.
Let me show you where a real client conversation changed direction.
I'm an AI strategist and business mentor. I look at how your business, people and tech fit together, then help you decide what needs to change.
Come into the work ↓
Real client work / Follow the change of direction
The brief came in.
Then we looked closer.
Pick a starting point. See what I spotted, where we took it and what happened next.
Strategic project / In progressJoin up the information behind the property business
A property business
The question in the project review
“It’s just research. Is it going to start to clutter it up?”
Gemma, recorded review call, 13 October 2026.
The portfolio app needed a clear job. Every new idea had to earn its place.
The brief covered the inbox, contacts and property figures. As the app developed, more requests arrived. We needed to decide which belonged in the portfolio.
Keep the portfolio focused. Test sourcing separately and agree one home for original files, with the app linking to them.
A reviewed prototype, a developing app and clearer decisions about what belongs in it.
Ongoing project. Portfolio views are built. The agreed connections and further workflows still need implementation.
Follow the full case ↗Strategy sessionHelp with social media and AI
A payroll consultant
The question I asked
“How much would I pay someone to do payroll as a job?”
Gemma, from the session transcript. Filler words removed.
The useful comparison was already in the business. We had to ask for it.
An in-house salary and an outsourced annual example put an £11k salary difference on the table. That gave the bureau something more concrete to explain to buyers.
Use the buyer’s alternatives to shape the message, then build the content and AI around it.
A clearer commercial argument, before building the AI.
£11k was the difference between the two annual figures discussed. Around £15k was then estimated after employer costs. It was an illustrative comparison, not an audited saving, a current quote or revenue earned.
Follow the full case ↗Delivered build / Recorded real useA joinery app for quotes, jobs and invoices
A joinery business
A question to think with
What does the person doing the work actually call each part of it?
An editorial prompt drawn from this case.
The app needed to make sense to the person using it.
The app was live, but the person using it found it confusing. We simplified the home screen around his own words for the work.
Quotes, jobs, customers and invoices became the main buttons and the bottom navigation.
A delivered app, changed in response to actual use.
Built for my husband’s business, unpaid by choice. A real invoice was sent through the app. No measured time or revenue result.
Follow the full case ↗You can start with a session or bring me into a larger project.
Let’s look at your businessThe person, as well as the work
I didn't start
my business brave.
I started it because I'd run out of any other way to survive.
Calm Back with Gem grew from that. The story matters because the business I build has to support a real life. Yours, too.
The longer story. How I got here.
The cage
For years I lived in a cage I’d built to be acceptable. People-pleasing. Making myself smaller so I didn’t take up too much room. I had a job where I wasn’t paid my worth and a boss who took my ideas and put his name on them, and I kept thinking if I just worked harder I’d finally get the recognition.
I never got it. You don’t earn your way out of being undervalued by being more useful. You just get more tired.
Anxiety my whole life. RSD before I had a word for it. A constant feeling of not being good enough that I carried like it was normal.
The mask running out
Then it all stacked. A baby. Postnatal depression. PTSD. Lockdown. And finally a late ADHD diagnosis that explained thirty-odd years of doing life on hard mode while everyone else seemed to have the manual.
I didn’t bravely choose to stop masking. I ran out of the capacity to keep doing it. And underneath the mask, when it finally came off, I didn’t find peace. I found rage.
Rage at a world that’s spent two thousand years keeping women small. At business advice written by men who got to the top because they had a wife at home doing everything else, then sold the rest of us the lie that we just needed to hustle harder. None of it was built for the woman who is also the wife, also the mum, also the one who remembers everything and holds everyone while quietly disappearing herself.
What actually worked
I was that woman. Unmasking in public with no idea what I was doing. It was messy. It flopped. And I was still trying to do it all alone, because some part of me thought that proved something. It didn’t. It just kept me exhausted and invisible.
Two things changed it. I stopped doing everything alone. And I found the first place my brain didn’t have to perform: AI, not as a magic answer machine, but as a thinking partner that holds the chaos so my ADHD brain doesn’t have to.
For a brain like mine that’s not a productivity hack. It’s an external brain. That’s when I stopped fighting how I work and started building around it. An ecosystem that supports the business instead of one that runs me into the ground.
What I stand for
Honest, inclusive, anti-bullshit.
Honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable
I say the thing most people only think. I’ll tell you what’s actually wrong, not what’s easy to hear.
Every woman gets to exist without shrinking
Inclusivity and advocacy. The systems were never built for us. That’s not your failing to fix by getting smaller.
No bullshit, no performance
I can’t stand fakeness, or the highlight reel that hides the support behind it. Be honest about your help. I am.
Work with me