Ep.41 Meant for More with Jen Silbert

There’s more to life than your job.  It’s something people say, but don’t really internalize until tragedy or crisis strikes.  What if we could reach that realization, sans crisis?  Jen’s on a mission to get women off the hamster wheel and into a life that lights their soul.

Jen Silbert is sharing her wisdom as a life coach, confidence coach and all around adventure seeking bad ass.  It was a lot of fun to hear the back story of my internet friend and her army counter intelligence that I had no clue about.

In this episode, we chat about:
1. Learning to celebrate our achievements and ourselves.
2. Recognizing our conditioning
3.  Creating a life for yourself outside your job.

Go here for full show notes and links!

Resources:  Want to know 7 things you can do today to make leaving corporate easier?  Grab it here!

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Transcript

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Unknown: 0:00

So I submitted a proposal. And Sharon, I was thinking about what am I going to charge for my hourly rate? Like I had no idea what I was worth monetarily. Yeah, I knew what my salary was, but I had no idea how are you going to price yourself out when you factor in now I'm gonna have my own health care and have to get I'm gonna have not a lot of overhead as a consultant, but I'm definitely going to want to earn more to make this worth my while. What other expenses? I had no experience in that area. So I just got out and started Googling and talking with people. And at the time, I offered myself up with a certain rate said, Here's my proposal, and then they countered, he said, We think you're worth more. We're gonna give you 20 more dollars an hour. How does that sound? More

Jamie Stephens: 0:45

than countered with more?

Unknown: 0:46

Yes. Yes,

Jamie Stephens: 0:49

I have never had that happen. Yeah, good job. I know. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Breaking up with corporate each week I chat with everyday women that ditch their nine to five to bet on themselves. We break down their journey into entrepreneurship, unpack the lessons learned and create the vision of how this life gets to be if you're willing to get uncomfortable and step into your potential. I'm your host, Jamie Renee, to time corporate escapee and coach to burnout women looking to plan their escape. Let's go. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Breaking up with corporate today I have my friend Jen silver on and Jen lives in Maryland, and she is a confidence and success coach. Welcome to the show, Jen.

Unknown: 1:41

Hey, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Jamie, you, you've got a great show. A great thing going on your podcast.

Jamie Stephens: 1:49

Thank you so much. It's been so fun. And it's really just kind of blown my mind about all the amazing women I've been able to meet this year and speak with and learn from and I am just totally geeking out on everything that I learned from everybody. Because it's just the the downside of that is it does give me a little bit of a like squirrel squirrel, you know, to where I'm like, Oh, that's a good idea. Because I just hear so much from women and their brilliance. And I just love to share it. And I just, it's very inspiring for me. So and I am so glad that you are here to join us as well.

Unknown: 2:25

Thank you. I've been listening to a number of your podcasts. And I've been very impressed with many of them when first time thinking Where do you find all these women? You know, they could we've all got their own individual stories and experiences and wisdom to share. And I mean, you are collecting a mother lode. Really some amazing women. So yay, on you.

Jamie Stephens: 2:48

Yay, yay, yay. I'll accept that.

Unknown: 2:51

Celebrate that win. Yeah. All right,

Jamie Stephens: 2:53

Jen, why don't you tell us your corporate story and kind of how you came to be a competence and success coach. And we'll kind of start with corporate and then jump into the journey of leaving that and go from there. So you can just kick us off?

Unknown: 3:08

Yeah, well, it's a squirrely path. But that's my trademark. I rarely ever take a straight line, you know, toward where I'm going, at least that was my history. Now I feel like I know who I am and what I want to do. So I think it will maybe evolve, you know, a little but not as dramatically as it has. So yeah, I, I love telling the story. And it was great to revisit it. So I appreciate the opportunity to do that. Because by looking back at where you've been, you get to really want to see how far you've come. And then celebrate that. And I think that that area of celebration is where I find we don't sit very often we're always looking at okay, what else can I do? And we're in that pattern of getting better learning more. You know, analyzing our decisions, do we make the right one and that so just sitting here celebrating the progress that I made, and saying, Hey, I survived. Right? It's a bit it's a big deal. I survived. And I got to where I'm at. So yeah, especially since as I revisited my story, I realized that some of the shifts I made really weren't all the they might have seemed foolish at the time because they really have a plan. Yeah, really have a plan. So I took some notes to remind myself because it was a squirrely path. But I was really in the the military industrial complex. You know, I got into the military out of school. And then I spent about eight years in the military and I landed in Washington DC. And so this is the hub for so many military contractors. So if you have a security clearance, you are in the military, you're pretty much guaranteed a great job in the Industrial Complex. And and I did and I don't know how I got there. But it was, again, just happenstance that I even got this job in military but I came in as a counterintelligence agent, like straight fresh off the street. So by the time I

Jamie Stephens: 5:16

know hearing this story, this is crazy. idea you're in the military, like why?

Unknown: 5:23

Yeah. Well listen, if you're on Wisconsin, who is from a small town, anyone from the Midwest, and you don't have enough money to get to college? I mean, I was working three jobs trying to get myself through community college seriously. And my parents had no money to give me I was burnt out. And I was looking through the classified ads, and I saw this job for a communication specialist and in the army, and I'm like, I was so naive. I was like, Oh, I did really well in communications class in high school. Isn't the job for me. Little did I know that it was gonna be like laying line, you know, out in the field for communications unit. You know what I mean? Yeah. Wasn't it wasn't me speaking Tandy, buddy? Yeah, your cable now might vary in cable, right? So thank God, I didn't get that job. But I got through all of the tests, physical tests and the written tests. Then they match up what jobs are available. And so there was this counterintelligence agent jobs that hate, you know, this MOS that has just become available. And all the recruiters are like, ooh, this sounds like James Bond style. Looks that and I'm like, all I wanted to know was when I get to Germany, because now I will say that for myself, I had a vision, which was I wanted to go to Germany, because my mom's German, I'd been there before wanted to trial. They said, Oh, yeah, we can do we'll do all we can promise you anything. And then they said, Well, your schooling would be at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, like, I never been to Arizona. Sounds good. So there, I was not having any idea what I'd be doing. But I did do eight years in the military, they got me to Germany came back to Washington, DC. And then at the time, to realist would have meant I had to go back to Italy, they were going to send me there. And I said, Nah, I got a boyfriend now. So that guided my decision to stay, which I don't think anyone listening, although I don't know, sometimes we make our decisions based on our attachment to some romantic liaison, right? You're like, No, I'm in love with this person. And if I went for what I wanted, it would mean I'd have to leave them behind. And I don't know, I'm gonna stay. Well, that relationship did not work out. It was a disaster, actually. But I almost almost went bankrupt and bad. But I did end up landing my first contractor job with an outfit outside of Washington, DC, and I got to wear a suit. And I felt like I was, you know, I was I was in corporate now. And then that was my journey, jumping from one ABC company to another, just flitting, I mean, I, I lucked out. And I will say I probably had the privilege of being a female, at which it was a predominantly male space. And I think they dug the idea of having a female in the space plus, it was I always open space, I felt comfortable. And so I took on the whole masculine persona. Yeah. And you probably hear a lot of stories from women who ended up subscribing to that, because that's how we're conditioned.

Jamie Stephens: 8:58

Yeah, that's the norm. Like, that's what it means to be in corporate MBM. But, you know, I automatically go to my lower voice, you know, even it's like I leave, that's just the expectation until we change it. You know, I mean, that's, that's the difference is what we see as norms and the things that we subscribe to are just because whenever all of these things were built, like we weren't part of that discussion as women like we weren't even a consideration. And so now that we are I mean, it's like that. That's the challenge is not just subscribing to it as that's the best way. That's just the only way that we've seen because we weren't part of the conversation. So yeah, I get that.

Unknown: 9:43

Yeah, I did train myself to lower my voice, because I either inherently or after being led to believe that I could be more authoritative with my lower voice. I did take on that lower boys. But as I look back and celebrate this space where I did step into my own authentic self, I defied the norm in that environment, which was to show up with my power suit in one of three colors, you know what those three colors should be?

Jamie Stephens: 10:22

Red, White and Blue.

Unknown: 10:27

It shouldn't be, that would be more, you know, that was seem the case when you're working for the military industrial complex, but it was that light gray and navy, black, gray navy. Okay, so those were the power suits of the institution. And I did work with a few women, the successful women who got into the pockets of the leaders, were wearing those colors on a job, but not me. I was either too naive, or just because I was in art, I had an artistic self. And that's an important part of the story. Because I was reconditioned to become a person I was not because it's it's like you're swimming with the fish. And you eventually got to like stay in line in order to stay with the school while you're moving. And so I, I was conditioned to eventually buy into that whole presence. All right, he's that whole person. But it was after I kept getting into trouble for trying to be my own self. So I wore bright colored suits, and I wear big, clunky jewelry. And that was my way of expressing my creative side. But I was very naive when I jumped into this whole business. Because when you get into the military, we get into that whole world, you're in Washington, DC, there's not really a lot of space for creativity. But I, I eventually got in line after being counseled a number of times to kind of tone it down, like pull back. Don't be that South. If I kept going forward, I found that I was getting rewarded. And I was moving from one company to the next as a contractor. So the way that environment works is if he lifts, let's say you get a job with a large contractor you usually out on subcontract jobs. And oftentimes that can mean you're going to work physically at the location of your subcontractor. There were just other ABC companies. But I've worked with the likes of like Boeing and Lockheed and GE and they probably all merged and become different companies now. But eventually, I landed a job with a large company who contracted me out to two different places. And I enjoyed that. And I developed a good relationship with the subcontractors because I worked hard. I mean, I, I worked hard, and I celebrate that. And I found little places where I could be creative, but now it was more along the lines of information and how I can manipulate information to create plans. And that's why today I still see myself as like the queen of roadmaps and systems and for me was because they came from this and it was my space to be creative. Yeah, I was doing fine until I got put into a position of my first managerial job. I ended up in a position where I had to oversee a small group of people, were they women? No, they were men. Okay. So it was interesting. There were a few men I work with who didn't have any problem working for me. But first off, I was new and feeling my way around. And by that I was I had a great relationship with a contractor. So I felt I was on solid footing. I knew what they wanted. And then I would translate that to my little team. But there were a few men who had a hard time working for me. And so apparently, they went back to complain to my parent company. But my parent company didn't really see me day to day in the workspace. Yeah, they knew that they knew the customer was happy, but they didn't see me become performance review time. They shit on me. I'm sorry. There's no other way of saying it, but they shut on me. And largely because these men had gone back to complain about my style. So with

Jamie Stephens: 14:50

that just rubs me

Unknown: 14:54

free right now. I mean, seriously? Yeah. i

Jamie Stephens: 14:59

You just I mean, like, I automatically hear all of the labels, and all of the labels that I've heard over my career, all of the labels that you hear about other women or women in politics, or you know, it's like, you're always too much or not enough. You're too shrill. You're too loud. You're too bossy. You're too, you know, whatever. You're too passionate. I've been told that before, like, simmer down, like, like, why don't you care about this? You know, I mean, that was always like, but yeah, all of those labels, I just hear them all. Immediately, I'll just come up, and they just make my blood boil with like, I hate that shit. I'm like, oh, sorry. Go ahead. I'm

Unknown: 15:43

glad those feelings. But that be a reminder, should we ever be tempted to go back into that environment? Yeah, they kind of shit on me, it was a terrible performance review. And I didn't really have much space to rebut it. I don't recall the circumstances. But basically, I really didn't get a chance. And I think they put me on some kind of probation, that if things didn't improve, within 90 days, that there was some other consequence that I was going to face. So I went back and I can you imagine me wanting to work with the same guys anymore. I mean, this is what's really cool, I look back. And I am inspired to advocate for good people as a result of this, because I fortunately had a few managers, other leaders from other companies who advocated for me at the time. And so I have a number of like nuggets of wisdom to take away from my story. And one of those is to just show up and do the best you can no matter where it is just no matter what anyone else says, just show up, keep doing the best you can. And there will always be the you know, the naysayers, there will always be the people are going to try to beat you up. But just keep going with that. And apparently, I had earned a good reputation. And the work I was doing at the time, was part of a team with a like an integrated team with contractors and all kinds of companies. And what we were doing at the time was, I worked in both like the satellite and in the aerospace arena. So I was a security consultant. And so I helped to write security policy. But I also got into System Security Engineering. So I'd work with engineering teams. So I had my hands in a lot of things. That's also not bad wisdom, too, is just don't put all your eggs in one basket, right? Like we're getting in with a variety of people learn a bunch of skills, and get testimonials, all these things help on a resume anyways. So I'm, I'm I worked with this integrated team and these other leaders found out about this performance review. And they came to advocate for me and said, Listen, they let me know that they were very happy with my work, and very pressed cuz few females in that industry. So I thought about what they said. And then I just made this command decision, which was very foolish at the time, but it led me on another path, which is I'm not dealing with the ship anymore. I'm quitting. I'm not working for you guys. I have no plan. I have no job. I don't know what I'm gonna do. But I can't sustain this. I can't work for these people. Yeah. You know, who wants to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't value and respect you?

Jamie Stephens: 18:48

Right? Yeah. And for them to just assume that whatever they said was accurate versus like checking with anybody else. It's just, it doesn't matter what you say, you know, in that, yeah, he

Unknown: 19:00

was a young guy that I worked for was my reviewer at the time. And I think his social skills were kind of weak, underdeveloped, and trying to be kind. Yeah, his social skills were just stocked and he was on the career ladder. I mean, it was his job me. Yeah. Didn't even bother asking, you know, when it just nothing made sense. But I knew that I couldn't work for so much slike being in a relationship with anyone, you know, whether it's in your marriage and dating life, but who wants to be with someone who doesn't value and respect you? And that's, that was one of my other nuggets here was to know your worth and that plays a role in the next part of my story. And I'm proud of myself for knowing that I was worth more than the the way that I was being treated. Now what wasn't too smart to just leave about a play. But here's how the story went. I was subsequently offered a position with the parents subcontractor company. And this is how amazing this story goes. It was on my terms. Apparently, they were so enamored with what I was doing, they didn't want to lose me. And they so they offered me the opportunity to create my own terms. It's like, we'll take you wherever you want. You want to be a part time employee, you want to be a full time employee, you want to be consultant work for yourself, and like, oh, I work for myself,

Jamie Stephens: 20:38

like ding, ding, ding, that sounds enticing. I have no idea what

Unknown: 20:43

that involves. But I said, who I like the idea of being a consultant and working for myself. And I don't want to work full time, because I could see potential that I can then contract out to other companies. And so I can have multiple contracts, same time. And so I submitted a proposal and share and I was thinking about what am I getting charged for my hourly rate. Like I had no idea what I was worth monetarily. Yeah. Okay, I knew what my salary was. But I had no idea how are you going to price yourself out when you factor in now I'm going to have my own health care of in Africa, I'm going to have not a lot of overhead as a consultant, but I'm definitely going to want to earn more to make this worth my while. What other expenses? I had no experience in that area. So I just got on and started Googling and talking with people. And at the time, I offered myself up with a certain rate said here's my proposal, and then they countered. He said, We think you're worth more. We're gonna give you 20 more dollars an hour. How does that sound?

Jamie Stephens: 21:44

More than countered with more?

Unknown: 21:46

Yes. Yes,

Jamie Stephens: 21:49

I have never had that happen. Yeah, good job. I know looks like like she is gonna figure out that she is the way underbid herself and be gone. Yeah.

Unknown: 21:59

i So in hindsight, I think that they had when they were to submit their own proposals to the government, and they're going to charge rates for their own people, they had to charge a certain rate, they couldn't just get away with charging what I was offering. And I think at the time, which was many years ago, was 35 bucks an hour. Okay, so they upped it to 55 bucks an hour, which in today's throw would probably be about 100 bucks an hour, or whatever. And, and so I think it was smart on their part. They knew the numbers I didn't but I'm like, Yeah, sure. So then I segwayed into self employment for the first time now I was a consultant. So yeah,

Jamie Stephens: 22:40

well, that is an interesting journey. I mean, that is a meandering, meandering, I don't know how to, I don't know what I'm saying. But yeah,

Unknown: 22:49

in indirect path to where I am now. So it got me into the position of working for myself and getting used to setting my own hours. But it was only then when I worked for myself, that I started thinking about what what mattered to me, what would my ideal schedule look like? Yeah. And it wasn't working the hours that I was working. And suddenly, I started seeing beyond that, and realizing that life was bigger than just this job. Yeah, I had been. So I'm such a high achiever and very driven that I gave everything to my job. And it was my that was my social life. That was my work life. And now that I was self employed, I could set my own terms, I started realizing that, you know, I'd really like to do other things and like to have other experiences. Like to get out of this field. And then so I, I, I set my own hours, I started working just part time now was really digging that. And then at the time I was married. And the short of that story is that I had a tragedy happened, I had a brother who was diagnosed with leukemia, and we did the whole year up and down, up and down remission. And then you know, regression remission regression. Then he passed away and my family fell apart. And that's when I had my first spiritual awakening. So some people have that sooner, you know, where they think intentionally about, who am I what do I really want? Am I really on the right path?

Jamie Stephens: 24:22

I think it takes a crisis for most people. Or some sort of, I'm into Jesus, like, I am broken. Yeah. You know, like, yeah,

Unknown: 24:32

I really admire anyone who's able to live intentionally and get off of the hamster wheel off of life on autopilot and be intentional about what they want. But I agree, I think for the most part, it's it's the pink slip. It's the health crisis. It's the divorce, that's someone gets sick in the family and We have that awakening and then so that this kind of, can I just lead into quickly, like, ask me where I'm at. Okay, just so I, I want women to know, when I talk about helping them find refine their purpose and passion. Well, when they have that awakening, whether it's after a tragedy or kids grow up, and then they move on, is when you realize that this isn't all there is, what do you do next? Like how do you decide where you're going to go? What you're going to do, and I didn't have a playbook at the time. And so I thought, Well, I'm gonna go back to high school. And when I graduated, what did I really want to do? I meant to go right. And I took a left. And I realized that I always was an artsy creative type. And I ended up going down this path of this, and I developed my analytical self, which, yeah, me, I found I had it in me, but that's not wasn't really in my nature. And it required, I think, a lot more energy to try to keep up than just being in alignment with who I naturally was.

Jamie Stephens: 26:03

Yeah. I mean, the whole upstream versus downstream.

Unknown: 26:08

Yeah, I paddled upstream. paddle upstream. Definitely. Yeah. So that that awakening and got me thinking, what I want to do when I got out of high school, and I wanted to be making people happy, I wanted to sing, I wanted to be on stage. And so I went back, and I'm a grown up. And now I'm going back and I'm doing vocal coaching and tap lessons and improvisational acting with the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC.

Jamie Stephens: 26:35

So how old were you at this time? Can I ask that?

Unknown: 26:39

Yeah, at that time, it was probably my mid 30s.

Jamie Stephens: 26:42

That's their fun, like to just be like, that's what I'm doing now. Yeah, but yeah, I

Unknown: 26:49

was fun. I think there's another bit of wisdom there is, is the topic of aging and feeling like you're too old. Yeah, to try something new. And I think that that can hold us back to when we realize, after having a full career in one field or full marriage, and now we have this awakening is like, I'm too old to go back and do that. Well, you know, you're never too old to do that. It's a matter of you dealing with the fact that yeah, if you go back for I can't even say anything I did, would be filled with a class of kids. But if let's say I wanted to go back in our will or Karate and self defense and something like that, um, yeah, there might be a lot of young kids in the class. But hey, there's a place for grant. There's a place for a second mom in there. But you'll get over yourself, you know, be yourself.

Jamie Stephens: 27:43

Yeah, I think it's that dropping of the ego and what other people will think of your journey and what other people's opinions are, that tend to hold us back. You know, I think once you learn that, none of that actually matters. And most of the time, people are just thinking about themselves anyway. You know, I mean, like, once you just kind of internalize that, like, anything else just becomes a lot easier, because you're not constantly comparing it to this version that you think people are judging you against, or the scorecard or whatever.

Unknown: 28:18

Yeah, well, the it's human nature to want to fit in, right. And it's a very strong abiding desire to belong somewhere. So I understand the power of that attachment to other people's opinions. But it's also hard when you want to break free and do what you want, and not believe you're disappointing anyone else? And then I would ask, why would you rather disappoint yourself? Right, then someone else?

Jamie Stephens: 28:53

Well, because we're taught that thinking of ourselves first as selfish. And yeah, really, it's like, if you're not filling up your own cup, I mean, this is like, we're just gonna be pouring on the wisdom drops here. But you know, if you're not filling your own cup, you can't fill anybody else's.

Unknown: 29:09

It was just after I had gone back to what I wanted to do when I got to high school. And I think that that is the I think, intuitively that was the direction I knew I needed to go to just figure out who do I want to be? What do I want to be because I don't like where I'm going anymore. Yeah. And now, if I fast forward to what I do as a life coach, like and many of us who decided to get into this business of life coaching, it's because we've walked that walk. We've dealt with all the stumbling blocks and falling down and getting up and now we can bring our own lived experiences to the table. I said, Well, I think I can use my old skill of creating formulas and plans and roadmaps and Even though much of the journey to finding the real you specially in midlife, specially after you've had a path and your career, and now you want to make a shift, some of this has to be an intuitive a lot of it has to be an intuitive effort. The first step I recommend is just getting to know who you are. And sometimes that means taking time off taking like a gap year, like when you graduate from high school. Yeah. And you take that time, one of our kids did that. And I thought, oh, man, you're gonna lose time, you know, the other ones going off to college, got a pathway. But one of the wisest things he ever did was to take a gap year after high school. So I think, financially, we can afford to take literally that time off. But I think, in that space, when I had a gap year, I also just took on odd jobs to just explore what might be out there for me, you know, like, I knew I wanted to work for myself and have more control over my schedule. But I did stuff like substitute teaching, which I will never again, I think I'm not cut out for dealing with all the way about teaching at all. It's about managing behavior.

Jamie Stephens: 31:29

Yeah. Oh, thank you. No, yeah,

Unknown: 31:32

I did all kinds of odd jobs, though. I hooked up with people instead of just jumping out and grabbing what I could. At the time, I had the luxury of also having jobs that maybe, you know, they didn't have benefits. I didn't need the benefits at the time. If you need the benefits, you're in a whole different ballgame. But I did things like washing eggs at a local farm. Alright, because I love chickens. And I figure it all right. I like being outdoors. I like being at the farm. I like the smell of manure and all that stuff. So it's a lot

Jamie Stephens: 32:09

of poop. Like your Midwest roots are like, I'm gonna go Where are you gonna farm?

Unknown: 32:14

Yeah, I picked up all kinds of odd jobs. And then I ended up discovering that what I want to do is to coach other women. So I started as a life coach. And it's some words, I guess, some of my nuggets that I want to maybe end with. If if anyone has any starts feeling at the first sign of dissatisfaction in your job, on your career, in your marriage, I think right away, right away, you need to be intentional about exploring that and not just overlook it and keep going on business as usual. Because should this will lead to a major decision for you. You need at least a year, two years, maybe even three years to really know for sure that this is the right thing for you. And that you're on a path where if it's a matter of a new job, where you're in a new field, where you're going to make substantial money on your own, some speaking more just from the entrepreneurial journey, and I think you can speak to this too. Takes damn long time to make enough money.

Jamie Stephens: 33:27

Yeah. Well, longer than you think. A lot longer

Unknown: 33:31

than you think. So when you hear all of the six figure people going out there to pick yours. And all I did is tweak this, and I found the secret formula. And you know, within the first year, that's what I was doing, I'd say pushing,

Jamie Stephens: 33:44

push, those are all the people that must have spent their whole journey leading up to that moment in personal development. Yeah, right. Because that's the shit that trips you up. It's not like necessarily the strategy or what you're doing or like figuring things out. It's the internal work to be able to do all that stuff and receive and know your worth, then, right? Feel that you have a valid point or that you're you know, that you add value to the conversation, all of those things, like keep people from not reaching them. And it's not that like, I'm not going to reach that, like I know I will. It's just taking longer than I anticipated.

Unknown: 34:31

Yeah. Well, you nailed it. And you came up with a great program yourself, which would help women who wanted to make the leap to go from corporate, to employee to entrepreneur, right, is to work on the internal stuff. And I tend to wonder if women in that space, really recognize the importance of that, that they really know that That's what they had to do. I don't know, if we just have to find out for ourselves, and we have to fall and get back up. And then we can look back and go, You know what she was? Right? Yeah, that's what I need to do. But that's hard.

Jamie Stephens: 35:14

Because it's, you know, words don't teach. But you know, as far as like the lessons that we really internalize, or that we have to, I think that once you realize some things are like the way things work, that you can apply that to other areas, and then you can learn the lessons from those words, but until you have, like that crisis falling down flat on the face, you know, all of those moments, I think, some of these lessons, you just have to go through them.

Unknown: 35:45

Yeah, you know, I think maybe one of the first attraction messages that we go toward is the the money part. In Play. We're like, Okay, I know, I want to make a switch. I know, I don't like this anymore. This coach promises that she can help me earn X amount of money. And so I'm gonna do this, she's got a system, I'm just gonna buy into the system, it's plug and play. I mean, I bought into a number of those myself, yeah, I'm going to save time, I'm just going to make that leap. And immediately, I'm going to just use the system, and I'm gonna start with the money. Alright, so this is this kind of constant messaging and myself buying into dollars, dozens of these programs over the past four years, as I've been a coach, I finally came to terms with the reality that, yes, it is, your success financially will depend on your personal development journey, and how much and the capacity that you have to embrace this. But even if it takes a while for you to make your first $5, I say celebrate that first $5, because you're better off than many who have a hard time making any money at all, because the majority of us cannot make money in the coaching realm. When we first start off, there's all kinds of things to consider. What model are you going to choose? Are you going to do one to one coaching? And do you feel confident enough is a one to one coach, and how do you properly coach you know, there's, there's just a whole lot of untangling, we need to for example, I'm the oldest of five kids, I've always had a more of a light fire on your butt, kind of a mothering and a parenting, Nellie, well, that doesn't go over as well, in the coaching realm. Okay, he kind of let people figure things out for themselves. Yeah. So if you're just spoon feeding or if you're lighting fire, and they're feeling bad about themselves, you're not going to get rehired?

Jamie Stephens: 37:59

Yeah, well, also, that just puts all of the work on you, right? Part of it is just learning to light your own fire learning to you know, do the things that get you motivated, because they're different for everybody. So yeah, I mean, like, you don't want to just create those same situations for people and like understanding how your role in plays out in that. And like the things that you have to learn for yourself. There's just so many layers upon layers of like things to unpack

Unknown: 38:33

layers upon layers. So as I have evolved in the coaching realm, and by far, I'm not financially where I would like to be, but, you know, we all need to have a vision. And it has to be strong enough for us to keep dealing with the stumbling blocks. And that I find the stumbling blocks is the end people in the space of stumbling. That's the space I want to work with, with women, because I've been there. I know a lot of those stumbling blocks. I'm not yet your six figure coach who's going to be going yeah, I might get you six figures. But I bought into a lot of six figure coach programs. They worked with me during my stumbling blocks, right? If I couldn't keep up, they might even lead me to believe that I had mindset problems. And so they kind of abandoned me so that I fall back.

Jamie Stephens: 39:32

I think we're both familiar with that coach you're talking about?

Unknown: 39:35

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jamie Stephens: 39:37

I mean, it's, you know, different strokes for different folks, I suppose. But

Unknown: 39:41

yeah. So so they're I love to work with women who are in this space. So I work both with women and again, we spoke earlier, I did do a bit of one to one coaching with a few men. And I kind of enjoyed that because they came to me with relation Ship issues. So I got to kind of be the voice of the woman. And of course, I didn't tell them what to think. But I knew enough that there were both sides and story. And I gotta give a guy credit, if he's stepping up to ask for help. Yeah, so for sure how it did bad, but I am meeting right now with women because I didn't really work a lot with women in my past, I didn't have sisters I worked in a male dominated field gets kind of cathartic for me to also surround myself with more feminine energy and balance off and that's part of my journey is cultivating more of my femininity and my feminine energy, and then the nurturing and the beauty and just the the sisterhood. Yeah, so I'm loving that space. And that's why now I specialize in coaching women, particularly those who, typically they're in midlife, because that's usually where we have our Inner Awakenings. Right. And I want to help navigate you through the uncertainty of where you're going by specially love working in a space with women who've made the decision that they want more from this outs, they want to tap into their fullest potential, which means that they're going to either start up that new business, they're going to make a major shift. They're ready to deal with the stumbling blocks. And I want to be there for you with what else a formula.

Jamie Stephens: 41:40

Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, Jen, do you want to tell people where they can find you find more about your programs, your sisterhood, all of those things?

Unknown: 41:51

Thank you. Well, I'm most of what I do, I've consolidated onto my website at Jenn silbert.com. And that will let you know my major pathways of connection to work together with you would be either one to one coaching, which I love to do, but I'm actually enjoying moving more into in group coaching now where I can work with a specific group of women on specific issues. Because what I love community, yeah. And so I created the Met for more success community or just a birthing that. And we have a system, we work on a theme every single month of a different success, pillar, confidence and purpose and boys and self care and courage. And that's something that's bringing me joy right now. And then the other is something I'm about to launch at the end of August, which is my woman speak heart and soul of public speaking program. Those are women. So this is for women who really want to learn how to cultivate their, their strongest voice, and learn how to overcome the fear of sharing it, and stepping into a confident self, public speaking, whether it's just in a small crowd, whether it's on stages, but it's a transformational program to get you comfortable with speaking in front of other people. So, so excited to launch that I

Jamie Stephens: 43:24

love that you're gonna put all your Shakespearean skills into effect.

Unknown: 43:31

It's definitely a system. It's specifically geared toward women, the founder of this program has been training a lot of women who go on to do TED talks, and she was a speaker in front of the United Nations speaking specifically for women. But you think about that, looking at our history, we've worked in a male dominated field and just not really learned how to cultivate a more feminine way, is sharing our message. So we can be impactful and not feel afraid of the showing up as the manly self. It's feeling in alignment with your feminine energy. So that's also on my website. So link to that is, is there as well.

Jamie Stephens: 44:15

Awesome. And I will put all of that in the show notes as well. So thank you so much, Jen.

Unknown: 44:21

Thank you, Jamie. I wish you all the luck too. Thank you so much for producing such a great podcast. You know, speaking of voice, thank you so much for having a platform for women to share their voice. You're doing a job.

Jamie Stephens: 44:33

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks to Jan for being on the show. It was fun to hear some of the stories that have shaped the woman I know today. It also offers us an opportunity to reflect on some of the ways our journey has shaped us. There's always just so many layers when we're ready to look and it's part of the reason I love this work so much. So some of the key takeaways from this episode are number one celebrate we He gets so busy always thinking about what's next that we forget to pause and celebrate how far we've come. Challenge yourself to celebrate the wins, big and small. Number two, notice your conditioning. As a woman in corporate, you can end up making reflexive micro adjustments to your authentic self without even noticing. Whether it's the change in your voice, your choice of clothing, or the way he respond in meetings, it's important to look at these things with curiosity. Number three, f all the labels, you will always be too much for some people and not enough for others. So here's your permission slip to be 100% you and let people have their opinions, people are going to think and believe what they want. And that is just fine. Number four, just show up and do the best you can. As long as you're living life with that kind of integrity, you can disregard the people that are there to just try to undermine you and bring you down. Things may not go exactly how you'd like them to, but you'll know that you've done your best. Number five, know your worth. And don't underestimate yourself. This is about more than money. How are you being treated in your work and other relationships? Is it worth it? Knowing your worth and recognizing where there's an imbalance can lead to a big change. Number six, there's more to life than your job. There's life to live places to see and so much more to who you are than your career. Kudos to those that can learn to step off the hamster wheel and start living intentionally without a crisis. But unfortunately, that's usually what it takes for people to wake up to what they really want. Number seven, upstream or downstream. When you're paddling upstream, fighting against your nature, it takes a lot of energy. What happens if you reevaluate and make changes that allow you to live in the downstream effortless flow more of the time. Number eight, give yourself a gap year, if you can take some time to figure out what you like to do. If you were to drop the ego and perceived expectations, what would you want to do or explore it takes time to reconnect with yourself and figure this stuff out? Number nine different coach for different folks. There are all kinds of mentors and coaches out there. Remember that you get to seek out the kind of coach that works for you and your needs. Okay, thank you friend. That is it for this week. Thanks to Jen for joining me on the show and sharing her wisdom drops with us. You can find all the links in the show notes. And if you're feeling like a rock star, go ahead and send this episode to a friend or leave a review so more women can find this show. Until next time find me on Instagram at Jamie Renee