Ep #255: Flight Nursing to Full Time Coach by Keeping It Simple with Janessa Dean

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches, I have another really awesome interview for you today with my student, Janessa Dean, who is so fun and so exciting. And I’m going to let her introduce herself, but just know that you’re in for a really great treat today, Janessa, what’s up?

Janessa: I’m so excited to be on today, Stacey, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. My name is Janessa. I am a coach for healthcare workers and first responders. I also help coach nurses and medics who are trying to get into flight nursing and flight paramedicine as well.

Stacey: That’s so fun. So you’re a flight nurse. That’s so cool. Can you just tell everyone a little bit about it? I know that’s very vague, but can you just give us an idea of maybe how you were doing that job and then got into coaching? Maybe that’s a great way to start it.

Janessa: Yeah, it’s kind of weird to even talk about it, because I even tell my current clients it’s been 11 months since I left that flight job. But it’s been 11 months of mourning that, because I loved it so much. But yeah, I got asked that a lot, “What is really that job?” And I’ve been a nurse for 13 years. I flew for seven of those, which is kind of crazy to think I flew more than just working in the hospital. But flight nursing is just a space where you have a lot of autonomy as a nurse.

So we acted with another partner, which was usually a paramedic but the company I worked for did predominantly scene calls. So we would be auto launched to 911 calls. So if there was a traffic accident or a drowning, we get a lot of AG accidents in where I live, a lot of water, a lot of skiing, snowboarding, accidents. So any 911 calls we would go to, but then we would also transfer patients from hospital to hospital. So if they needed to go to a higher level of care of a facility, then we would transfer them all over California. And we also did transfers outside of the state too.

Stacey: That is so wild. I don’t think I know anyone who does that or that to me is the ultimate badassery, are just my thoughts about it.

Janessa: I guess I didn’t feel like a badass. I mean there were times that I did, but it was just a really fun job but it also came with a lot of downsides. We experienced a lot of emergency situations. There were a lot of deaths and there was an extreme amount of pressure that went with it. We did a lot of things that physicians did in the hospital because in emergency situations they counted on us to do those procedures. And so that’s where I found coaching.

I went through two weeks of five deaths in a row, three of them were kids. It was just really hard. I was having a really hard time with it and I struggled.

Stacey: You’re going to make me cry. Trigger warning, I can’t handle that stuff.

Janessa: Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it was so hard. I think the kids were the hardest part for me. And I really struggled for two weeks with it. And I really started to have nightmares and started to have bad thoughts and negative feelings about myself. Is this job something that I want to continue to do? Do I have it in me? And is it still worth it for me to do? And at that time, I found Jody Moore’s podcast and I started listening to it. And I’m like, “What is this Life Coach School?” And looked at The Life Coach School. And then I looked up a coach that was on there and I hired my first coach.

Stacey: So fun.

Janessa: And it was actually a coach that coached teenagers because I had three teenagers at the time. And I was just learning to navigate parenting teenagers and then working this job.

Stacey: You just blew my mind. That doesn’t seem possible on any level of the world that you have, I wouldn’t have even thought you had littles.

Janessa: Yeah, I actually have four kids.

Stacey: So the fact that you have teenagers, my mind is, wait, what’s happening right now?

Janessa: I actually have four kids and I almost have an adult. My oldest is almost 18.

Stacey: I just cannot believe that. You look amazing.

Janessa: Thank you. I did start young. I was 21 when I had my first one, but yeah, my maturity level definitely hasn’t caught up yet, [inaudible] adult kid either.

Stacey: I love it. [Crosstalk] things about your personal life that I’ve known you for so long. And it’s the first time I hear it, and then my brain is like, wait, hold on, rewind, what just happened?

Janessa: Yeah, a lot of people say that, they’re like, “You look too young to have teenagers, but yeah, actually I embrace it now but at the time when I was going through all that, it was really hard to navigate my job and having three [crosstalk] at the same time.

Stacey: Gosh, your job must have just made you go home and hug your babies so tight all the time.

Janessa: Yeah, there were definitely moments, and that was one of those moments. And when I had those five people die and three were kids, that triggered me because one of them just reminded me of my daughter and that part was so hard. So I hired my first life coach and he really just helped me with parenting. But then it also helped me with the aspects of my job and realizing I could just loosen a little bit of the reins and a little bit of the control and I could process some of these things that I was feeling.

And once I did that, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I need to put these tools that I learned in the hands of other people that do the jobs that I do.” And it just became this thing. I was like, “I’m going to go and get certified with The Life Coach School.” And so I ended up getting certified and I just was like, “Let’s do this for fun. Let’s start this while I’m still flying. I work 24 hour shifts, it’s only eight days a month, it’s full-time, let’s just do this.” And then it just took off.

Stacey: Wow. Were you selling coaching to people that you were working with, that you were meeting in the hospitals or who were you selling coaching to while you were also flight nursing?

Janessa: Not at all. Actually the people that I worked with were like, “What is this life coaching thing? This is kind of a little bit ridiculous.” And kind of made fun of me a little bit.

Stacey: Yeah, I got that too.

Janessa: I mean, we lived with each other. We worked 24 hour shifts with each other so it was just banter and it was, but no, no one that I worked with. It was just people that I just, I started posting on Instagram. I remember my teenagers showed me how to do a first post. And then I just started posting a couple times a week and then people in the industry would just reach out to me and be like, “I am feeling that exact way too.”

Stacey: So other nurses, people in the healthcare industry, we’re just finding you through Instagram?

Janessa: Yeah, just finding me. I didn’t even do any kind of algorithm.

Stacey: Were you using hashtags?

Janessa: I don’t even think when I first started I was even using hashtags.

Stacey: So they were just Googling you or Googling something, I don’t know, you can’t really Google on Instagram.

Janessa: I’m not really sure, that I don’t even know still.

Stacey: They were searching for something on Instagram. Don’t you love that Googling has now become, what it means to search, they were searching you on Instagram?

Janessa: I know my older kids have to remind me of that, they’re like, “We don’t say that, mom. We don’t call it that.” But yeah, I mean they just started to reach out to me on Instagram and I would post fun things that were happening to me at work and pictures of the helicopter. And just things that I was struggling with and some things that I had learned from coaching. And it was just starting the conversation of talking about your emotions, which you don’t do in healthcare.

You just don’t talk about these hard things because we have to be the strong ones to continue on. And yeah, people just started reaching out to me. I got people from other countries too, which was kind of crazy.

Stacey: That’s so amazing.

Janessa: In the industry as well. And then it took off and people started to come to me more. And then three months in I had to go part-time and then six months in I went per diem. And then this year after my third round of the Mastermind, I just decided to leave my job totally to go all in.

Stacey: So fun. I just don’t remember what event, was it Cabo, I think. I went to the welcome event and we had a conversation, where you were, I don’t remember exactly what it was but I just walked away thinking, she hasn’t caught up to her self-concept yet. She hasn’t realized how much money she’s going to make or anything. And I just remember, you were so scared of maybe going full-time or it was something about 100K. You’ll have to remind me. But I just remember thinking, no, you’ve got this. [Crosstalk] going to catch up.

Janessa: I remember that conversation too because you said something like, “Congratulations.” And I was like, “About what?” And you’re like, “About leaving your job. “And I remember feeling like it doesn’t feel like congratulations to me. It feels scary because I feel like I had this kind of opposite reaction of leaving my job. Most people want to get into coaching and leave their job. I didn’t want to leave it. I loved it so much. It was like a part of me, but I knew to get to where I wanted to be by the end of this year that it was going to be required of me.

Stacey: Yeah. I love that though. I love that you got to have the opportunity to leave, from a place that wasn’t resistance, or get me out of here. I had that a little bit too. I had to work very hard on my thoughts about selling the mops in Walmart. But I remember I worked so hard on that with my coach. She was like, “One day you’re going to want to wish, you’re going to want to look back with fondness and you’re going to want to have had it be the sad experience that you left. You’re going to want to miss it.”

And I thought that was so weird and so bizarre, but we worked on it for, I don’t even know, at least a full year. And when I left I would pick up the phone and then just get choked up and hang it up. And just I would be in the middle of the show and it would hit me that this might be my last audience and I would be so sad and have to choke back tears in front of people. But that’s a good feeling. I know it feels sad and there’s grief, but it is a good feeling to be sad to leave and move on to the next exciting thing.

Janessa: Yeah, I think it’s taken me a full 11 months, almost a full year to feel like that. And I think just allowing the mourning and the sadness of it. I often tell my clients or I’ve had this thought too. The helicopter that I used to work for, go right over my house and lands at a hospital right near me. And I remember at the beginning when I’d be coaching my clients on Zoom and I would hear it and I’d be so sad because I’d be like, “I’m not there anymore.” But now I can hear it and be like, “I’m so happy. I’m happy for taking that chance on myself and being where I am now.”

But also happy for the people who are still doing it and who can still take on that job.

Stacey: Yeah. I sometimes think about that with general life coaching. I loved general life coaching so much. I loved one-on-one coaching so much. Now I love business coaching, but I do think about that as I’m not on the ground anymore with the normal everyday customers or clients, students, whatever you want to call them. But I get to help other people be, and I get to kind of live vicariously through them and I get to hear their stories and that has to be enough.

Janessa: Yeah. And I think it’s those thoughts that really helped me too, get through that time was when you get to be a part, hands on, be a part of saving someone’s life, there’s no other feeling to have that, it’s so rewarding. But to be able to coach people who are directly now in that and doing that, that’s even more rewarding for me. Because I have more than the five missions that I ran in my 24 hours of the people that I helped. Now it’s multiplying because I get to be helping the hands of all the people who are doing it.

Stacey: It’s so good. I’m so happy for you.

Janessa: Thank you.

Stacey: That’s amazing. Okay, so what we’ve been doing, you know, but I’m going to just tell everybody else. What we’ve been doing on the podcast lately is I had this brilliant idea where I was like, “Why don’t we have, every time we notice a student that we want to have come in and talk to our audience and share their success. Let’s have them tell us what they want to talk about because they know what’s relevant and useful for the people. They know their journey more than I do.”

And you sent in some really fun stuff to talk about. So can we talk about it? Can I ask you about it?

Janessa: Yeah, let’s do it.

Stacey: Okay. So this was interesting to me, because I didn’t know what it meant but based on what I think it means I actually think it’s a really interesting topic. So you had said that you’ve learned three things in your journey. I’ll read them all and then we’ll just piece by piece if that’s okay and talk about them all.

Janessa: Yeah, that sounds great.

Stacey: So you said, trusting myself and trusting my clients, business, coaches, the 200K process. And then that you can’t help everyone, keeping the specific people I want to help in my niche and then letting it be easy. Keeping my offer simple. Keep doing what’s working. I cannot wait to talk about let it be easy. But I’m interested to know what you mean, to talk about the journey of trusting yourself and your clients, your business.

What does it mean to trust your business? What’s been your experience with the work you did to trust your coaches, the 200K process? All of this is very intriguing to me because I feel like I have also done a lot of this work. But sometimes I feel it’s harder for me to tell them, “Trust the 200K process, trust your coach”, because I am your coach. So it’ll be interesting to hear your take on all this. but trusting your clients, I think they’re going to be really interested in that. So let’s just start there, tell us everything.

Janessa: Yeah, it’s weird because when I first applied for the 200K room, I had all these things I wanted to work on like PSPR and webinar and how to launch and all these things. But I get into the room and I realize I need to work on my thoughts. I’m really good at taking action and following along the protocols and doing what I’m supposed to be doing. But I need to really work on my thoughts. And so each round I picked thoughts that I wanted to work on. And then I let those thoughts drive the pieces of the actions I want to take in my business.

Stacey: Yeah, so good. Can you give us some examples?

Janessa: Yeah. So for this first one, which was my thought was just trusting myself and trusting my clients. I knew how to trust myself. I really worked on that in my 13 years over my career and working emergency care that I had to trust the decisions that I made, even if there was a poor outcome or even if I didn’t know the outcome. So, I created that trust for myself.

Stacey: Wait. No, keep going and then I’m going to ask you a question about that.

Janessa: Okay. Are you sure?

Stacey: Yeah, yeah, keep going.

Janessa: Okay. But I realized what I wasn’t creating was that trust in other people. I had so much trust in myself that I was able to control my situations and do really well. But I wasn’t allowing myself to trust my clients, that they would come to me if they needed something. That I didn’t have to be the one that was force feeding them or trying to bring them in. That I could trust the 200K process, that. There’s things where I feel I need to wrangle up against it, and that doesn’t feel right for me. I could just let go of that and just trust that what feels right for me, I can take in and what doesn’t, I can work on that as it comes.

Stacey: So good. Yeah. Okay, so here’s my question because I think that you’ve stumbled on something so relevant to everyone. Trusting yourself when you don’t know the outcome. This is really interesting because we talk so much about this in 2K and 200K where we put so much value out in the world. And what people want to do before they do a bunch of work, before I put the launch together, before I put time into figuring out how to do a webinar and creating the content, before I write all the sales emails, before I do post a bunch on Instagram or put myself out there in a big way.

I need to know what the outcome is going to be and that I’m going to be safe. And this is such a thing that I feel like we talk about all the time is, what could you tell them about that? What was your process for being able to trust yourself even when you may never know the outcome?

Janessa: Yeah, I think it just took me back to flight. I didn’t know if these patients were going to survive, but I had to trust myself that I would make every decision in between that would get me the very best outcome for them. And so it’s part of trusting myself with not knowing exactly how that would look for them but knowing that with each step that I needed to take, that I would know when it came.

Stacey: How were you okay with not knowing the outcome, you would just not know if they were going to live or die?

Janessa: Yeah. And here’s the thing, the majority of my patients, I would never know. We’d spend 15 minutes with them and that was it. We didn’t know if they survived or they didn’t when we dropped them off. And so I think it just comes with a level of trust again in yourself. That you are making the best decisions in the most critical moments that you can. And I took that level that I established with myself into my business. I don’t know what my outcome is going to be.

I don’t know how many clients I’m going to get. I don’t know if this is going to convert. But what I do know is that I trust that this feels good for me right now.

Stacey: Yeah. So I’m making the best decision. My coach gave me this. I’m making the best decision with the thoughts that I have now or even if you have thoughts of regret or shame or disappointment. I made so many mistakes I feel like in the last couple of years in my business, as we’ve just had massive growth. And one of the things that again, we’ve applied to that is back then I made the best decision I could with the best thoughts I had at the time. And then my responsibility is to learn from those decisions and decide if I want to make them again.

And figure out what thoughts I need to make better decisions and trust myself that the next time around I will make a little bit better decision. And I feel like as a company internally even, it seems like it’s more relevant to me now with my team because that’s what I’m really, I’m spending a lot of time interacting with them. But it does feel like I’m seeing that shift is everything over the last two years that we’ve learned is slowly starting to culminate in our reactions to things, how we handle things, how we problem solve, how we prepare.

Everything I’m like, “I can see now.” So maybe one of the thoughts that’s also helpful is I can see now that even though I didn’t know then what the value would be or how this would play out, it always does. There’s no lesson, there’s so many people I feel like that I see come into coaching spaces and they’re very, even you made the motion, the fist, hitting the fists together. They’re like, “I have to figure this out right now. It all has to make sense. There has to be resolution.”

There’s no flow or trust or allowance for there are going to be some lessons you’re going to learn that will feel very painful. And you don’t really know how it’s going to show up in the future or so many things that I, even early on, lessons that I had. I would ask my coach, “Why is this happening to me?” And she would be like, “Because one day you’re going to coach on this.” She would always say that to me. And I’m constantly doing that now. I’m constantly like, “I have something to tell you about this. I have an experience with this.”

And so, I just think that’s so powerful to think about trusting that it doesn’t, you may not know the outcome now, made the best decision you could, trusting yourself in that. And then also knowing you don’t know what is going to play out in the future but it will be there again.

Janessa: Yeah, because I think there’s something about that when you do that, you learn to have your own back. No matter what, you learn that you’re going to have your own back. And then you’re always going to figure it out. And I think along that, what came up for me when you were talking about that is also how do we not let it become part of our self-concept of ourselves when it doesn’t go right? How do we not let it mean it’s something about us? How do we pick ourselves back up and problem solve for it so that when we are hit with it again we can work through it a bit quicker?

Stacey: Yeah. How did you do that when you were flight nursing, if you lost a patient, how did you recover from that, especially once you had the coaching tools?

Janessa: Yeah, I think one, I had to because we would land with a patient even if we lost them and I would go right to the next one. So one, we were forced to, so we had to. But two, it was just really allowing myself to process some of these negative emotions. It’s great when you feel motivated and determined, everything’s going well. But success is really built on being able to process these hard things and still being able to allow yourself to know that you will come back from them.

And so I think that’s the tools that I really took from coaching that helped me just show up really great as a flight nurse. And then everything there I just integrated into being a coach. My time as a coach didn’t start two years ago when I started my business. My time as a coach started when I was a kid and people would always come to me and ask me for advice or I would help them or I would just be in service of them. That’s why I think the transition happened very naturally for me too, into stepping into it.

Stacey: Yeah, that’s so good. Having your own back, if anyone takes anything from this episode, I do think that entrepreneurship is the one thing it teaches you. The people that succeed are the ones that figure out how to have their own back and the ones who take longer to or quit. It’s because the experience of failure inside of their body is so unpleasant. But not because of the failure out in the world and what other people say, but because of how we treat ourselves.

Janessa: Yeah. And I think I don’t do that 100% great all the time. But it’s noticing, like you say, when we’re in a low value cycle, that’s okay, we are going to get back into a high value. And what are we supposed to learn from that cycle as well, that’s going to help us for the next time we’re in it?

Stacey: Yeah, I learned that. And it’s so interesting because it’s one of those things where you hear it and it lands, but you don’t know how useful it’s going to be until years and years later. But seven years ago, I was listening to The Vortex, the law of attraction book and the woman talks about the point is not to always stay in the vortex, you’re human, or the entity, whatever, I don’t remember.

But they were just explaining that you’re never going to just be in the vortex, in the place of total alignment, of total manifestation, of total love. I think it was a relationship book. So maybe it was in total love of yourself and your partner. And they’re like, “You’re going to fall out all the time. The point’s not to be attached to being in it. The point is to be good at getting out of it and coming back in it.” And I think that’s so much about low value cycles and our belief in ourselves and our belief in our offers and our clients and the work that we’re doing.

We’re not going to always be in belief. Even for me I struggle now. My mind can go to very negative places as well and I can end up in my mind, living in a box. My husband’s always very impressed at how I’ve gotten there. This is next level for how we’re going to end up in a box. But I do think that’s the human condition is just the way our brains are designed.

And so then the art is just getting back in it and not making it this big deal. But I think that the biggest piece of it is how you treat yourself in it, are you kind? Are you compassionate? Are you understanding? Can you be with yourself in your worst low value cycle?

Janessa: Yeah. And I think it’s also just remembering you’re having to go through that because you’re going to be helping a client later on with that.

Stacey: Yes. Someone just posted that today, I think in 200K.

Janessa: Really?

Stacey: Yeah, I think, I feel like I saw that somewhere where they were saying that exact thing, I’m going to be helping my client do this as well.

Janessa: Yeah, it’s like you said, we just have to be one step ahead of them. And that also requires us to not feel good. And so it’s in those moments where we are in those low value cycles or we are feeling extreme pain or whatever it is, it’s meant for us to experience it so that we can help our clients later with it as they’re going through it.

Stacey: Yeah. And I just want everyone listening to really hear this. If you are experiencing some failure or disappointment or you haven’t gotten your business off the ground or whatever it is. Truly know, I really believe our clients feel so safe and seen and heard. And they feel held when you can tell them, “I have been through this and I have come out the other side.” If you are telling them all the time, “Well, I don’t know, I’ve never had this problem before and my life is perfect and amazing, and I don’t have these issues.”

It’s just a lot harder to feel, to have that trust of this person really knows and has me. And every time I’m telling any of my clients something I’m like, “Oh, no.” Or if you can even, the higher value is being able to predict a problem, a decision they’re about to make that will lead them into a failure before they do it. To me, the massive value of coaching is wait, hold on, let me just show you this before you take action on it. You may not like the outcome. And then that creates so much trust of this person really has it, they know me, they know, they understand this work.

So even though it’s very painful to go through the failures, the whole last two years of my life I feel like I keep telling myself I have been through so much after creating $10 million in revenue and building up employees. And there’s no one teaching you this stuff, how to manage people, how to project manage, how to do any operations, any of that stuff. And I just keep thinking and budgeting even and KPIs and just all of this stuff that I never wanted to do in my life.

And I keep thinking, this is going to be gold for my Two Million Dollar Group students. They’re all going to benefit from the messy ass failures that I have had. And so it’s kept me going is this is one day going to be so, so valuable. So your low value cycles will become so, so valuable.

Janessa: Yeah, I love that you said that because we even talked about this in 200K last week. And this is a concept that I teach my clients about zooming out. Sometimes we’re so stuck in what we’re going through or the circumstances that are happening that we can’t see the bigger picture. And how I explain this to my clients is sometimes we have a coding patient and we’re so focused on what’s going on. But we have to be able to zoom out and see what led up to that code.

What are we going to do to prevent it to happen again? And where are we going? And that’s kind of the concept that you are talking about too. No matter what’s happening to ourselves and our lives right now, we have to be able to zoom out, see why it’s happening and see the bigger picture so that we can take action from that instead of what’s going on.

Stacey: Yeah, so good. Okay, so let’s talk about sticking with your people.

Janessa: So this is my challenge. You’re like, “Simple offer, keep it simple.” This is my challenge. My brain wants to offer me a million different things and go out and try a million different things. But I love that you say to keep your simple offer and stay with your offer because my brain wants to give me all different kinds of things.

Stacey: Why do you think it wants to do that?

Janessa: So this is the second round, my breakout group helped me realize this is exactly why we’re here.

Stacey: Love our breakout groups.

Janessa: I know. I’m like, “Wow, you guys really know me.” But it’s because there was oftentimes, when you work in healthcare you want to serve everybody, especially the people who really need it. And there were times where we would land at scene and there were multiple bodies and multiple people. And I had to make the decision, who was I going to take.

Stacey: Oh, fuck, that’s tough.

Janessa: Yeah. And that, I really struggled with that for a long time. But I realized in making that decision, I wasn’t helping anybody if I was stuck on trying to help everybody. I only could take one. I only had room for one. And so in that decision I was really helping that one person more than trying to help everybody. But I was still taking that thought with me into my business, I’m like, “I want to help everybody though.”

Stacey: Yeah, but you can’t.

Janessa: I want to help [crosstalk].

Stacey: Literally you can take one person or no one. Yeah, it’s so good. Now, I do think you can help everyone if you decide to be a general life coach, if you want to do the general life coaching path. But what you’re saying is, if you really want to help, for example, flight nurses, first responders, healthcare workers, if you want to help those people who are doing what you did then the reason your Instagram for example was working so well is those photos with the helicopter, by the way.

That’s the first time I was like, “Who is this girl? She’s so cool. Just who does this? Who was doing this job?” It’s so wild and rad that you’re a female doing it too. But I remember those photos, So if you were posting those photos and then also talking about relationships and then also talking about over here weight loss and then also talking about over here, you could still help all the people with being a general life coach. But it would be harder to help the first responders.

It would be harder to help the healthcare workers. I forget which language you use, but it would be harder to help them. They wouldn’t find you so, without much, I mean it wasn’t much effort, when you’re posting and creating content and thinking of that. But without you having to really go after them, that’s created by that concentrated content that’s directed very much at them.

Janessa: Yeah. And I think early on, my brain got lost in the weeds of well, other people who aren’t in this industry or aren’t healthcare workers and first responders are reaching out for me to help them and I wanted to. I wanted to. And I think in the beginning stages, you go out there and you help everybody. But as I met that six figure mark and made 100K I knew I had to really constrain down to just my people. And that’s what the second round really taught me to do was I can’t help everybody. In fact, I’m helping more people if I just focus on these one group of people.

Stacey: Everybody, listen to that thought. I’m helping more people if I actually just focus on this one group of people. Unless you’re a general life coach, if you have a niche, don’t niche unless you want to niche. But then once you do want to niche, you’ve got to go all in with them. It would, being like me, being like, “Well, my niche is life coaches but I also help photographers and I also help all these other people.”

And one of the big things that Brooke taught me in Million Dollar Mentoring is what your problem solving is, your content. You’re exercising your brain for the solutions that you’re going to offer people. When you really commit and laser in, it’s so good. The reason I think 2K and 200K, they’re so valuable because they are so lasered in on the coaching industry.

Janessa: Yeah, totally. And I still kind of do that because I am a general life coach for these people.

Stacey: Yeah, so you do get to do that.

Janessa: I still get to do that, which is so fun. I don’t feel constrained in, and it feels great for me. So yeah, I mean, especially for all those people who are general life coaches out there, I know there’s a lot of drama that comes with it, but I love that because you get to help your people with all the things.

Stacey: Yeah, good. Alright, now let’s talk about this. I was very excited for you to share on this, letting it be easy.

Janessa: Well, I think this is for all the overachievers out there and all the people who like to have their hands dipped in multiple things, that’s me and that’s the people that I coach. And as the person who has actioned their way into everything that they have accomplished their whole life, coaching has really helped me realize, it’s not about all the actions that I’ve taken. It’s about the belief that I’ve created in myself. And becoming an entrepreneur, I had to step back and remember that too.

I think it’s so easy to hustle to get there and you can create it. I know I can create it by hustling and doing a lot of things. But at the end of the day, that’s not how I want to feel. It doesn’t feel good. So I really had to go through some tough, hard things in some of these rounds where I just had to just let it be easy and just work on the belief by not actioning more.

Stacey: Okay, so tell me how you did that because people are going to be listening and be like, “Well, what do you mean?”

Janessa: I really had to create the evidence of myself of the opposite. So I knew how to create the evidence of actioning more to get to my goal. But what I had to do was really work on my belief that it could be easy and I would still be in demand.

Stacey: Okay, so it’s an intentional thought creation on what would it be like to be easy and be in demand?

Janessa: Yes. So for example, I had this great opportunity and great problem to have 20 to 25 consults in the last like six months, monthly. And last month, it became so much, so much of doing consults that I wasn’t even closing them because I didn’t have the mental capacity to be coaching my clients and my groups and taking all these consults. So last month, I just decided I’m only going to take 12 to 15. And so I think I had somewhere in there 13, 12 or 13 but I closed more.

And so that was just an example of just let this be easy. I don’t have to do more. I don’t need 12 to 25 or I don’t need 20 to 25. I just need whatever number that I set, give myself evidence that it could be easy and then I closed more clients and I made more money.

Stacey: It’s so good. There’s been so many times I’ve tested that. I was just telling someone, I don’t remember what group it was in, but I said, “You won’t have evidence of this concept and letting it be easy, you won’t have evidence until you test it.” I remember coaching with my coach and I used to write all new emails for everything. And I do now from time to time as the room grows and changes. When I’m selling things I want it to be fresh and up to date, so I’ll do it, I’ll change things around every once in a while.

But I would do all of it over and over. And there is a piece of that when you’re learning copy and you’re getting better, that is always a good thing to just be writing constantly. But it had tipped over into where I see a lot of people doing where they believe that effort is what creates the result in a launch. And so you saw me coach on this, where someone gets their work done ahead of time and then they’re freaking out. And they’re having so much anxiety and they’re like, “I never have anxiety with launches.”

And I’m like, “Yes, you’re working too hard to have to even pay attention to the anxiety in your launches because you’re just producing content, throwing it out there. There’s no time to think about the anxiety. So now you’re present, you’re aware and it’s available, and now you can do something about it.” But there is that tipping point of it has to be hard, the hard work and the strain and the hustle and the effort is what’s creating the result.

And I just remember being really behind, I don’t even remember all of the details of the situation. But my coach said, “What if you just sent the same exact sales sequence that you did last time?” And I was like, “Well, no, I mean, obviously you can’t do that. And that felt so true to me. No, that’s not how it works. It has to be new emails.” And she was like, “But what if it didn’t?” And I’m like, “But then where would the money come from? Where would all the sign-ups come from?” And I was like, “What if you just embrace that for just a second.”

And I thought about and thought about it and I’m like, “Let’s just try this because the worst that happens is I know it doesn’t work, but the best thing that happens is it does work.” And it worked. We had more sign-ups than ever that round and I was like, “Oh, shit, I didn’t rewrite any of these emails. We just uploaded the same emails from last time.” I remember, I recently gave [inaudible] coaching, maybe three or four months ago. I said, “What if you just send out the same ones?” And it worked, that’s when it clicked. It really doesn’t have to be all this effort.

It was just one more layer of it really does, it can be simple. So for everyone listening, I think that you can think about what are, especially if you’re at that mark where you’re between, I don’t know, if you’re at 25K, 50K, 100K, 200K. If you would be doing this work that we’re doing in the 200K room, think about whatever your goal is, your brain’s going to rattle off a list of all the things that you think you have to do to accomplish it. And then what if you just halved the list and then you just go to work to believe that would be enough.

And whatever you’re doing, you just make it higher quality, which is what you said. If it’s consults, you’re doing 25, but you’re doing so many that the quality has diminished. Then you’re like, “Okay, so what would increase the quality of just 13? What would I need to do to increase that quality on those calls?” It’s so brilliant. I often think coaches are doing way too many consults.

Janessa: Yeah. And I don’t think that’s for everybody either, especially for people who are procrastinators. But for me, as an overachiever and a doer, I needed to give myself evidence that I could actually do less and make more or do less and have higher quality, whatever the thought is. I had to lean into the discomfort of trying to find that evidence for myself.

Stacey: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought that up. Yes, this is not, people love to use things against themselves or for themselves in a not great way. If you are already struggling to show up in your business, this was not the validation. One time I had a friend of mine say, “Wait, so I could just sit, if I were selling pet”, I don’t even know why she said pet rocks. “But if I was selling pet rocks, what you’re saying is I could just sit in my office all day and think about selling my pet rocks and people would buy them?” And I was like, “No.”

Janessa: That goes back to also what is that feeling for yourself, what is that amount of action that keeps you into that feeling that you want to have. And noticing that too much action can create that feeling that you don’t want to have when you are hustling, but then figuring it out for yourself. What is that happy place for you, where it’s not one end of the spectrum or other? It’s maybe what’s maybe the middle ground.

Stacey: Yeah. You have to know am I and do I tend to be or in this situation am I under-actioning? Am I over-actioning? Those are the all or nothing ends of the spectrum and then is there something in the middle? Because I will say people hear me talk about three day work weeks. They’re like “I just reuse the email.” But I work so hard. If I didn’t send out new emails, I used that time to create content for 200K. That was just a free me up to go do something else, not to go sit on the couch and eat cookies.

Janessa: Yeah, which I think brings up a good thing. It’s just figure out what works the best for you. For me, I like to be under a lot of pressure too. That’s when I perform because I was in a high pressure job. So I like to create that kind of pressure in my business because if I have my little bit of pressure then I’m going to do really well. And so it’s really knowing yourself, trusting again, yourself of what you need. But also having that trust of your clients and your business and your mentors and your coaches too.

Stacey: I’ve learned I have to talk about my business that way when I hire people. I’ve gone through a lot of people in the last two years. But I realized after all that, I was like, this is the way I like to talk about it to them now.

I’m like, “The people myself included, but leadership in my team as well, imagine if you were a top chef person and you were really into that, or Beat Bobby Flay, that kind of environment. If that, the adrenaline and the rush, if that really excites you and doesn’t shut you down, if that’s really compelling and you like to be constantly reaching at your potential, you’re going to do really well with us.” Because that’s what it is. I don’t even think we let ourselves, I always fantasize about having lots of time and to just play with my baby all the time. But the reality is. I just want to execute the next idea.

Janessa: You wouldn’t love that. If you had that, you wouldn’t love doing that all the time but you had to go through all of that crappy stuff in your business to now be able to confidently say that to the people that you’re hiring.

Stacey: Yeah, because I don’t want them to be disillusioned about what it’s like. Now, I think it could be worse. I definitely am, it’s not craziness pushing craziness. But I remember the times where, for example, Black Friday, I would work when I was pitching, Black Friday would come, we would come in at three in the morning. And we would pitch until 9:00pm at night. And you would make $2,000 a day, which was so much money at the time for someone like me. And I thrived on that. I thrived on doing a show and having to work so fast to clean up.

I literally felt like I was on one of those game shows, people were waiting and they were like, “When’s the next show?” And I’m just moving as fast as I possibly can to get reset, to throw up another show. And then doing that for 12 hours straight. And it was the most exciting thing ever. It’s not sustainable all the time, but it was so exciting for me.

So I do think it’s helpful to know how to use the things that we’re talking about or all coaching in general, knowing who you are, what you like, what works well, if pressure works for you. Or being in, I call it a high, a fast-paced environment. I would just be bored in an office environment. I would not thrive in that situation. I would never put myself in that situation. I need to be hands on. I need to be out. I need to be doing things. And I think it’s just helpful to know, this is who I am. And then where does it tip over into the unhealthy status?

Janessa: Yeah. Knowing your limit too.

Stacey: I need to rein myself in.

Janessa: Yeah. But it’s using those things that you know that you’re innately really good at for your business. I love pressure so I use that in my business and I magnify that portion of it. And the areas where I do feel weaker, I just take them as tools and kind of figure those out as I go. Instead of letting my brain go to the opposite where I’m like, “I’m not good at this. I’ve never done this before.” I try to really focus on magnifying the things that I am really good at that push me and drive me.

Stacey: Yeah, so good. And it’s just helpful to know when do I need to rein myself in? When do I rein it back? But I do think also something you said, I think a lot of people experience this where they might be over-actioning and have the 25 consults and then they want it to be simple and easy. And so then they’re like, “I’m going to take two consults.” They go to the opposite end. Or I’m going to shut down consults or whatever.

And I just want to recommend to everybody, because I think this is such a brilliant example is, I love that you were like, “Let me just half it. Let me just half it and start there, not burn it all down. Let’s just see what half does.” I love a good moderation when you’re fixing things. Where you’re like, “Let’s just fix a little bit, not go all crazy.” Because that also gives you an idea to see, you were so easily able to see that it worked.

Janessa: Yeah. But I think also, that’s the power of having a coach, having you as my business coach to remind me of those things. To have the room, 200K room, to have the peer coaching, to have the support. You don’t have to make a rash decision like that because you do verbalize what you’re going through. And people help you come to the decision that feels the best for you. I really think that’s what helped me with that decision and not going all the way, the other way.

Stacey: Yeah, so good. I know you just have to have, I don’t know, I would not have been able to function, I feel in the last two years and through pregnancy and becoming a new mom without my Masterminds to help, what you said, zoom out. And just be able to see things with a little less emotion and a little less charge. And it’s just been so valuable. And then to do that for other people is super valuable because it helps you remind yourself about those things.

But we need outside perspectives on our brains because our brains will want to make all of the fancy, quick decisions to get us out of emotions and try to get a different result. And then it just gets you so far away from a successful business and what was working. And then I see this a lot where people are like, “It was working at one point and I’ve done so many things and made so many decisions, I have no idea how to find my way back.” And you just want to have people that can always intervene before that happens.

Janessa: Yes. And that’s what this room is really about, too and having you as my coach. Being an entrepreneur is way harder than the job that I did before.

Stacey: Really?

Janessa: Because you have these constant mind obstacles and things all the time. And it’s knowing that you have your coach, you have your peers, you have the support of the room in with you, is so helpful for me. And I think that also comes from me being able to work with a team before. That was ultimately what I felt gave me my success. So it’s really being with people who can help you catch your brain before you is key.

Stacey: Yeah. Do you think that entrepreneurship is so hard because of so much of the intangibleness of it versus if you were flight nursing there are, I imagine very specific protocols and procedures to implement? And ways to triage and things to do that you’re like, okay, this is the process, you’re not sitting there, let me believe harder that this person will live.

Janessa: Yeah, I think there’s protocols and things like that. But I think there were moments where I just didn’t have time to process my emotions and think because I couldn’t. It wasn’t about me and I just didn’t have the time to do that. But I think in entrepreneurship, you do have a lot of that time and it’s easier, I think, being an entrepreneur for me to tie it into my self-concept and to get really low sometimes about what’s happening in my business. And maybe that just will come with time, I don’t know, but I get the feeling, no matter [crosstalk].

Stacey: I think you can go through stages of things that are harder. But I haven’t experienced it being dramatically different of, I no longer have to process emotions and I no longer feel disappointment and I no longer feel shame or whatever it is. There are certain emotions I don’t indulge in as much anymore. But you’re just still a human with a human brain doing business.

I’m reading this book, I can’t stop talking about it because it is so good. I highly recommend it to everyone, but I’m reading Onward by Howard Schultz and it’s the story of Starbucks. They were declining in 2007 and then the recession hit. And he was chairman and he had to step back in as CEO. But he just, the whole book is truly him opening you up to his brain as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, the owner of the company. And all of the mistakes he made and the decisions he made from thought errors, the operational mistakes they made, how he had to create a transformation agenda.

And then believe that agenda itself. I’m always talking about, you have to do your evaluation and then you have to believe, you have to go to work to believe that evaluation if you actually take action on it will produce a different result. And then he had to get everybody in Starbucks on board with that vision, the partners, the people that work there, the shareholders, the board, everybody. And he talks about days where he was just like, “I don’t believe in and I’m struggling.”

And other people had to come in, his peers and pick him back up. I was like, “This is my brain. Okay, so if Howard Schultz’s brain does this, the creator of Starbucks, it’s probably okay that my brain does this.” It was just so powerful to see. I don’t think it’s like that at every level. I mean they’re a multibillion dollar company and I’ve just made so many of the mistakes that he made in that book. And it was just reassuring to see, there really isn’t a blueprint. We’re just theorizing and taking action and evaluating and doing that over and over forever.

There’s no perfect playbook of this is the right action for your business. And one of the other things I will say, I don’t want this to become this sales pitch for reading this book but you all should read it. One of the things that he talks about in the book is all of the decisions he makes, he brings them back to what are our values and what matters to us. So he had so many other people from other companies and access to some of the most brilliant minds in the country, in the world.

And people were giving him outside advice like, to get out of this you should go franchise and you should, you’ll make so much money if you franchise. And he’s like “Wait, but that would not be who we are, what our brand is, what our values are.” And I think that we forget that. We have to, what you’ve said is I have to check in with me. I have to think about how I am feeling, what’s going on with me personally. I have to filter the 200K process. I have to filter the podcast.

I have to filter all the decisions I make through what’s in alignment with me, what I value, who I am, what my brand is. And then I just get outside help to help me navigate moving forward. But there is not a blueprint, you have to create that.

Janessa: Yeah, I love that because that’s exactly what I talk to my clients about too. It’s not about time and experience as you’re trying to up-level yourself into some of these jobs or careers. It’s about who you are, what you value, what kind of team player you are. That’s what draws people to you. That’s what draws people to wanting to hire you. And that’s what drew ultimately that guy to being able to excel and get his company out of the recession, is back to the core of what is it that you value.

Stacey: Yeah, so good, I love it. I have to just tell you, I know we’re coming up on time, but I just have to tell you, I think what you do is so incredible. My sister is a nurse practitioner and I’ve just heard all of the stories. She was in the emergency room during COVID and then before that she was a neuro nurse practitioner. And I just remember, this stuck with me that she told me this story because they experienced, she’s the person that has to take someone off the vent.

And it’s her or her colleagues that have to tell the family that there’s not going to be any further ability for the doctors. It makes me emotional thinking about it because it was …

Janess: Well, now you’re just making me emotional.

Stacey: I know, but she told me the story that someone had put their notice in. And they were like, “I can’t do this anymore.” And they had one shift left and they lost someone on that shift. And I just think I get so excited with the work that you do, because my sister needs it like so many people in the world. I don’t know why I’m so emotional about it but so many people need what you do. Michelle Rogers always gets me too. I fucking cry every time I coach her ass.

Janessa: Well, you make me emotional too, because I think about COVID for me and the transport world was very similar. In fact, we would arrive at the hospitals and that patient was going to die no matter what. If I took them they weren’t, they most likely weren’t going to survive the transport or if I left them there, they weren’t going to survive either because they needed to go to a higher level of care.

So I had to have a lot of conversations with the family and tell them, “I can’t make you a promise either way but what I can promise you is that I will do the very best to get them there with the knowledge that I have and the experience that I have, no matter what.” And that’s what we do as coaches. We empower people to believe in themselves in the moments where they really need it.

And that’s why I feel very deeply about my work too, where it’s just I am helping these people be able to have the confidence in those moments when they know that the outcome might not be good to be able say that confidently to the patients and their families too.

Stacey: Yeah. You would have no idea, but I have been just championing and cheering you on so much since I found out what you did and just it means a lot to me.

Janessa: Thank you. And one thing that I do want to say is that the power of your coach believing you is huge. And I don’t know if you know this but when I applied for the 200K room, I was $2,000 short. I had just started my business six months before, but I’m like, “I’m going to get into this room.” I applied anyway and they said, “We’re not taking underdogs this round. You have to make 25K.” And I think I had made 23K. So I was like, “Okay, fine. I’m going to go out there and make two more K in three days.”

I made 2K in three days but it was past the day of applications. And I said, “I’m not even going to care. I’m going to ask them if I could still get in. I’ve made my 25K, I know it’s a couple of days after.” And you came back and said yes to me.

Stacey: I don’t remember that, but I’m so happy I did. I was, literally my heart was pounding and I was like, “Please tell me my team let you in.”

Janessa: You let me in and that is the power of your coach. I don’t know if you know how much that means to me, but the power of your coach believing in you. Because at that moment I had only run my business for six months and that belief I carried with me and I made 65K in my first year of coaching and this is now my second year of coaching and I’ve doubled that.

Stacey: I’m so glad you shared that with me. I do that all the time where I’ll fight for people in the enrollment. My team goes through the first wave and then they send me, here are the maybes, here are the people that we think we should wait on. And I always go through the videos and then they’ll be like, “Stacey, we can’t take everyone.” And then I’ll be like, “Okay, but here’s my argument for this person and here’s my argument for this person.” And then sometimes I have to be like, “I will stand by my decision, it’s my money, if I have to give them a refund.”

But  it doesn’t surprise me that I did that. I have always thought you were going to be a star and your work is so great and just loved everything about you. I am so team Janessa, in 100 million possible ways.

Janessa: Well, thank you, I mean, just thank you for having the belief in me and just helping me step into my self-concept of being a coach and who I want to coach and where I want to be and how I want to run my business. 

Stacey: I’m so excited for all of your future clients, truly, just it’s the best. Okay, before I get emotional again thinking about my sis, tell me, I’ve asked this on the end of every podcast and I’m curious if you’ve thought about it but if you were thinking about the episode and what you think you need to share with people. Is there anything that you think we didn’t cover that you’re like, “But they really should hear this?” I just always love to give people that final thing of what you might want to say to people. 

Janessa: I know I said that I didn’t want to get emotional again but here’s the thing, and I’m going to get emotional. I just want to thank you for not giving up on yourself in the moments that I know you wanted to in your business because I’m here with you now and you’re supporting me.

Stacey: My gosh, it’s going to be a cry fest. Stop it.

Janessa: And it’s helping me support others who are showing up in the moments that people need them, in the most emergent moments. And I just want to tell everybody, don’t give up because your clients need you too. So I think that’s what I want to just leave with is just thanking you so much for not giving up on you in the moments where you wanted to in your business and to not give up on yourself because people need us, whatever we’re doing.

Stacey: Yeah. I will tell you that has been the main thing that has pulled me through from all the failures I’ve had, all the bad publicity I’ve had in the last two years and the just extreme postpartum anxiety. That has been probably the hardest thing that almost took me out of the game. It’s so crazy. My husband’s taking my kid to the park. He’s obsessed with me right now, and he only wants to be with me. So if I have to work, we have to get him out of the house, it’s so awful to just hear him going, “Mama.” So he’s taking him to the park.

And I’m riddled with anxiety about him leaving the house without me and 18 months later it’s exhausting. And it would be so easy to just be like, “Alright, let me remove myself as much as possible and just be with my kid 100% of the time.” But I do, I think so often, people like you, people like Michelle, and listen, if I haven’t said your niche it doesn’t mean I don’t think you do amazing work in the world. There’s just something about what you do with first responders that’s so near and dear to my own heart with my family.

And then Michelle helping parents with children of autism, it’s just fucking life coaches are so amazing, so, so amazing. I actually had someone, I don’t know if you have time for me to tell the story, but I had someone reach out to me on Instagram and they wanted to do an article on me. And I thought it was going to be a really good thing and then I just started looking into it and thinking about it. And there’s just very few people that I’ve seen writing articles about good things about the coaching industry.

We weighed the pros and cons because I do think I’m such a good debater and I’m so good at answering questions if they were got you questions or whatever, if they ask me about cults and I would be so good in that situation. I know that about myself. But I was like, “I don’t think I can handle with my postpartum, if something came out that was a hit piece against me.” And so I declined, but when I declined, I said, “I just want you to know, I don’t know if this is going to be that or not.” But she was saying, I’m doing background with the whole coaching industry.

And I said, “Just know ahead of time, I just don’t have any negative things to say about the industry. I love this industry so, so much. I love the people in it and I just can’t take the chance that it would be used in any way that would bring us down.” And so I just really believe that. I feel so strongly in all of you and the work that you guys are doing. And I benefited from it so deeply and I still benefit from it so deeply.

And I watch you guys tell the stories about your clients and I watch all of your transformations. And it just, I think it’s the best thing that ever, just ever. I appreciate your love and your acknowledgement. I will receive that. I’ve had so much fun on this conversation because I’m such a fan girl of yours, now you know.

Janessa: Well, I’m a fan of yours too. So that’s great. This is a dream come true.

Stacey: So thank you for sharing your wisdom on the podcast. If people want to follow you and see your awesome helicopter photos and see what you’re up to, how can they engage with you, or if they’re a healthcare worker, how can they reach out to you?

Janessa: Yeah. So I only have one platform, it’s on Instagram and it’s Janessa Dean Coaching and you can find me there.

Stacey: And we will also tag that in the show notes. And of course you only have one platform because you keep things simple and easy. Alright, well, thank you so, so much for coming on. I’ve had so much fun and I will talk to you soon.

Janessa: Okay, thanks for having me, Stacey. Bye.

Stacey: Bye.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first 2,000 the hardest part and then 200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk free, you either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.