Creativity, Courage and Trust with Jennifer Lewis

Hello and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I am absolutely delighted to be here today with Jennifer Lewis. Jennifer is a leadership and team coach, but with a bit of a difference. So Jennifer's professional story includes 3 decades in some of the most senior roles in advertising, media, strategic leadership. But I feel like this only tells part of the story of Jennifer because she is deeply creative. She is committed to the human in the business, and she is an extraordinary coach, extraordinary human being. And I'm so pleased to be here today to, you know, get Jennifer to share a bit of her story. So welcome, Jennifer. It's so good to have you here.

Thank you so much for that really lovely introduction. I appreciate that.

All absolutely true. And so we are recording this on video, and if you are listening in only on audio, you won't be able to see that Jennifer has the most magnificent bookshelf in the background. It's hard for me to stay focused on her because there is a rainbow of books. I find myself wanting to know what each of the individual books, and there's just signs of her creative side everywhere that I look. So it is, yeah, it's amazing. And if I put up some video snippets, or if you do, Jennifer, I encourage everyone to have a look at them. I would love it if you would share your story, particularly, I guess, your corporate story, corporate to coach story.

Yeah. So as you mentioned, I did work in advertising and specifically on the media side for 30 years. Literally went to college for advertising business because I decided I really do love to be creative. I just didn't love the creative on demand requirement of some of the creative side of advertising. So the media side allowed me to be creative, but more on my own time and my own schedule. It gave me a lot of space for my creativity outside of my day job. And my first job— and this is part of my story is sort of following the breadcrumbs that the universe leaves for me. My first job was a referral from my college into somebody who was a previous grad from my school. My second job, her brother hired me. And then third job went on. And then I got an interview to work for Starcom, which is one of the largest agencies in the world, in their Toronto office to work on Walt Disney Studios. Because who doesn't want to go work on Walt Disney Studios?

That's cool.

So I did that for a year here in Toronto, and I got this opportunity for what was a 2-year transfer to Los Angeles that was to learn the studio business.

We know how to do transfers, eh?

Yep. Yeah. So initially it was to learn the studio business, and it was also to teach the client about Canada because at that time the studio Canadian client was based in Los Angeles. They didn't actually have a Toronto marketing team. They do now. But it was to go there, teach them about Canada, and for me to learn the studio business. As happens in all of these stories, ended up staying in Los Angeles for 17 years.

Yes.

Which was an incredible experience. And I stayed at the same company because I always got the opportunity to do more. Yeah. And over time, I actually wasn't even touching Canadian business. I was working on fully US accounts. Eventually basically was running most of the Los Angeles office day to day and the teams in that office. Yeah. Which is a really incredible experience. I always got to do more, learn more, network. And even though I was in LA, I got to work with the people across all of the US and Canada, just in different teams and different new business pitches, that kind of thing. So I was always exposed to something new, something different, something bigger. And what happens is obviously we went into lockdown. My family was still in Canada. Started to miss my family and I was like, maybe I should move back to Canada. Yeah. And what ties into some of the work I'm doing now is I had this moment. I actually, I'm going to one day look up the timing on this with one of the new heads of the company. And we were going to a meeting and it was very, it was people more senior than me. And I was a senior vice president at the time. And they started gossiping in the car about somebody else that I worked with and other peers and people at my level. And I was just like, Wow. Like, I can't actually trust you now because what are you saying about me when I'm not here? Yeah. Was the immediate thing, which goes to some of the work I'm doing now in coaching, is to say, oh yeah, this makes it really not a great place to work. So that happened there. I made the decision to move back to Canada, had an incredible opportunity coming back to Canada as a chief client officer for what was the second largest agency here in Canada. Did that for a few years. As happens sometimes with new leadership, our values didn't align, that role ended. So that sort of is what took me out of advertising, because when I stopped that, I was like, what do I actually like doing? And that's why I was like, wait, I really like the people side of this and helping people solve their own problems, understand things. And one of the things that I didn't mention back in LA is that company was large enough they had an internal coaching team And our LA leadership team, at one point we received team coaching as a leadership team. And as part of that, we also got personal coaching. And I was just so profoundly transformed by that. I was also working with a therapist at the time, got to do both. Highly recommend if you're in that place in your life, do coaching and therapy.

Yeah.

But I was so transformed by coaching that I actually was like, wait, I wanna learn and understand this more. So I actually did co-active training. I started that training in 2017. Finished certification in early 2020, took my time doing it. And then I was doing some workshops and stuff when I was in the US, but then when I came back to Canada in this very senior role, it didn't feel ethical for me to be trying to coach people because everyone I knew in Toronto was either a client, a vendor, somebody I worked with or related. So I wasn't doing a lot of coaching when I first got to Canada. Yeah. So that's been an interesting pivot is to get these people that I wasn't working with for 17 years, worked with in one capacity in 3 years. And now I'm like, wait, I'm actually a coach and I'm actually training And this isn't just a lark. I did actually start this years ago. Yeah. Well, that's how I got here today. Yeah.

Amazing. And I'm imagining that like advertising is a pretty unique environment for in terms of like the dynamics at play. Do you mostly work with advertising clients, media clients now?

I have been having those conversations with some agencies. I'm doing some work specifically on a 90-minute workshop for pitch teams for agencies.

Agencies.

And I have some clients who are people who've worked in agencies, also working with the sales teams, the media vendors who are trying to sell into agencies. Because as a coach with my background, I can understand more of the challenges they're facing and how many people they need to talk to. And it's not just, I'm gonna sell you an ad on TV, come buy it. It's all of the work and the process. So like traditional sales coaches don't understand that it's not like one buyer and there's all of these different things. So working with sales teams is also something I'm doing. Clients actually have been the ones who've been least receptive right now, which I think has been interesting. Like my former brand client, I'll crack that nut at some point soon.

You sure will. So I totally jumped the gun there because I'm so interested in this dynamic of advertising clients. Tell us about what your business is now. Like, what is the work that you do?

Yeah. So going back to that story about the ride in the car with that former boss and also just this last role, my alignment issues, what I'm really working on, it took me a while to get there and you've seen some of it on my website as well, is really the idea of trust being the foundation of everything that matters. Whether it is self-trust, do you trust yourself to make the decisions that are right for you? And it's really about that decision-making versus following a leader. Because once you start to follow a leader and it's misaligned, something's going to go off the rails. And then the next dynamic would be relational trust, the trust that comes between two people or within a team, because you'll see a lot of companies where the teams are really strong, but the company is not. So that relational trust. And then the third layer is that collective trust. Is the leadership living up to the values they espouse? Are they actually doing what they say they're going to do? Is that company there to really support them, to bring everyone together? So I've been having a lot of conversations and working with teams and individuals. About this idea of trust and how it shows up. And honestly, it gets to the heart of so many different problems that you see in companies, is there's an underlying trust issue, whether it's named or not. It's just a friction. So how do we get that out of the way? And the pause is one of the things in some coaching is this idea of vulnerability-based trust. And as a white woman, vulnerability is one thing for me, but also understanding vulnerability is very different for different people who are not white privileged people sitting in these rooms.

Yeah.

So vulnerability is an interesting thing. So trust at the level that is safe for people and really helping other people see that vulnerability is very different. And just because you feel comfortable talking about a bunch of different things doesn't mean you should always expect that of your peers.

I love that. And just your ability to articulate that, I think, speaks to what it means as a coach, as a facilitator, as a team coach to build safety in us. And so yeah, assuming that everyone— or having an expectation of everyone being vulnerable as a mechanism to build trust, assuming everyone has the same experience is, yeah, really unsafe if it's not done in that really careful, balanced way. So I really— I think that's so interesting, and I haven't heard anyone articulate it as clearly as you have. Who are your clients? So they're obviously sometimes in advertising, What sort of organizations do you work with?

So I've been working with the media sales organization, really help them with their teams. Sorry. And also I've been working with some organizations that support the industry to really help other people. It is an industry that's been really hard hit by the economy.

Yes.

I think every time you're seeing a headline of the big organizations laying people off, that's hitting agencies a lot too. And as brands stop spending, they cut the retention. Painters at the agency, so people are let go. A lot of it is also helping people reestablish what it means and what they actually want to do, whether it's in the industry or adjacent to the industry, and think about what are their skills and how do they trust their skills versus the job title per se. So that's who I've been working with lately.

Yeah, amazing. And when they come to you, like, Assuming that they don't necessarily say, oh, we need to build trust, what are the pain points that they're experiencing that you see that mean they need this work, even though they might not know that's what it's called?

Yeah, the thing that I often see, and I'll often do this or this, people are just feeling a little bit of friction that they can't name. Like something is just feeling a little bit tense. There's some sandpaper there. So it's like trying to get underneath what's this thing that I can't always name that just feels misaligned. So if I'm working with an individual leader and something just feels a little unsettled, it's trying to get to the heart of that and naming what is unsettled and then go, okay, let's figure out, like, can we resolve this in this space? Is there a change that needs to be made? How do we understand what that looks like?

I love that. I love that. And so the work you do to build trust, what is the combination of your services? Sizing, but I think actually better for you to just tell me.

So if it's one-on-one with an individual leader, and just to clarify, I use leader as self-leadership, to be a leader of people, to be a leader because you're leading yourself in life. So I use it broadly.

Yeah.

But really getting into values, what's named, what's not named, what are your strengths, where do you start, and how do you own that and become really confident in your strengths? We're so predisposed as humans to go, this is what I can't do. How do we start to brag a little and get more confidence what we can do, and especially women. I love working with women who feel like they're aging out of whatever system we saw in advertising. At about 50, you start to lose some women. But yet we reward men at the same time. Yes, I'm going to be polarizing today, but it really happens. So how do we get women to really feel like they can brag about what they're doing? And I have a thing, and I do get women to do this. I'm like, what would a mediocre white man say? In this particular moment in time.

Yeah.

And 99% of the time, the man would just go do it. And I'm not choosing any particular man. I'm not insulting men in general, but there is just this willingness to just go do things and not second-guess it that so often women have been trained not to do. Yeah. And trying to get women to just shift that. And not that I want to, like, put men versus women and polarize or anything. It's just how do you start to shift that internal dialogue a little bit? So that becomes some of that self-trust is getting a little bit more confident, talking really confidently about what you do. I also am trained in a bajillion different assessments.

I was going to say, I was going to say, I think Jennifer, you're the most certified and trained. Tell us a little bit about what are your favorites of the certifications that you've done?

My, for different reasons. The thing is all the certifications do and assessments do something different. Like EQI 2.0, love that for just getting into a conversation that feels a little bit richer and getting into some of that below the surface stuff, like what's really going on. Something like the Leadership Circle Profile, that's the one I've been doing the longest. I've received that myself 4 times.

Yeah.

I just, the feedback there is so rich and so valuable.

Yeah.

And it is again, focused on the positive and focused focusing on what you can do. It's not about focusing on like, hey, here's the reactive stuff. What is your creative stuff? And when you're at the best, how do we put more energy there? And I truly believe it comes through in a lot of these things. But the reactive side of leadership circle, which I'm happy to go on about forever, is those are the things that most often kept us safe as children. Yeah. And if you think about the behaviors that you did when you were 5, 6, and 7 that kept you safe, Those are your reactive defaults that happen now. We're not going to change that through coaching or anything. But what we could do is really focus on what is the thing that you can focus on. So again, what are those positive aspects? Where can you focus your attention? So that's why I love that model.

I love it too.

Yeah. And then the other certification, I'm not getting certified, but I'm doing the training, is on the ORSC training, which is Organization Relationship Systems coaching. Oh, cool. But that is really about understanding people collectively together and how to hold that energy, how to notice that energy, how to stay neutral in those situations. I've worked in corporate for 30 years. I have opinions on how I see people show up. But as a coach, you have to stand outside of that because you're not consulting. I'm not giving advice. I'm helping those systems solve the problems and figure out what problems they're going to choose to solve.

Amazing. Yeah, your, the services you offer, this combination of coaching, team coaching, facilitation, and it sounds like you have this huge repertoire of tools and perspectives that you bring as needed to, to the engagement that you have. Yeah.

I think one of the things, so there's two things to say on that. One is, as I made this pivot, school has always been like one of my safety places. So going into school and Classes has been safe, which is why I've done so many. Yeah. Um, but I also don't always need to sell you or my clients an assessment if they've done it. A lot of those are evergreen. You don't really need to do it again. Your top 10 strengths are probably going to be your top 10 strengths for most of your life. Yeah. Your core values are your core values. They may change in priorities, but we can talk about that. So sometimes it's just like, let's pull all that stuff together and see what the story is when we have all of these different perspectives, because I do think there are A lot of people, at least in advertising, have done like one training here and they have one check-in and then they never talk about it again. Yeah. But what if we actually brought that back and go, what does it mean today? And what can we learn from it? I think there's something really valuable in learning that information and resurfacing that.

Absolutely. And that's something you specifically offer, isn't it? The ability to sort of consolidate all of this work that you've done. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, it was something like the first few months of shifting into coaching, I wanted to talk to a lot of people. So I used my network and did a lot of research and what do you actually need? What have you done? What would be interesting? And what sort of, what did come together is a lot of people have done a lot of assessments or have changed companies. So they did one assessment over here and one over here and one over here, and they're now at a fifth company. I'm like, cool, let's bring all those assessments together and tell that story and really use that and coach from that place today. Something that I just noticed, as opposed to adding something else in there. Yeah, we have all this information. Let's really synthesize it, figure out how we can use it. And for me, with my focus on trust, I've spent a lot of time going, okay, what are the markers of trust? Each of these tools as well to really go, okay, these are high, these are low. I can get to that story. And that might not be the problem for everyone, but for me, that was really important to go, does this thing that's really important to me show up in all of these places? And generally it does.

What an extraordinary way to go about it, because I think you're right. Like, you move on to a new organization or a new coach and, no, let's start again. Here's a new assessment, here's a new tool, here's a new perspective. And to have someone come in who can understand the breadth of things that you might have come across and help you to tell the story or to reflect using that existing IP, I think is kind of extraordinary. So tell us what it's been like to build a business doing this. Like, what have you learned through the process?

Uh, in reflecting, one of the things I've learned is how different it is building a business in Canada versus the US. Solo entrepreneur in the US versus Canada, the paperwork's very different. Yeah, because I was coaching when I was in Los Angeles before I came back to Canada. So one, I've learned that, that's been a lot. I'm also learning to really— being a coach is one thing, being a business owner is a second hat, and I've had to learn to embrace that business building side of it, which I built businesses when I was in advertising. Part of my job was to pitch new business tell clients our story. So I can do that. But actually what was interesting is going— selling the agency felt easier than selling myself. So that's been something I've had to learn is how to tell Jen's Awesome Story, which is the thing I want to do for my clients, but tell that story for myself. So that's been one of my big things that I've had to learn is that. And for me, cause I know myself well enough, it was setting up all of my systems early. Because I was literally working until July, sort of August, I was like, let's do this. So it hasn't even been a year yet. Yeah. But I committed to systems early, like building my CRM, my bookkeeping, working with you. I did that really early versus some of the other coaches that are in the accelerator, but I can learn from them, but I needed those systems and tools so I could do it right. The first time.

Yeah. And isn't it interesting to know what our nervous systems need, right? I know that to be able to get out there and market myself, I'm going to need to feel like my back end is sorted out. Whereas for other people, it might be, I need to know that I've got this amount of money in the bank. And someone else might be, I need to know that I have this training in the books. I love that. And I do think any investment in systems is always a good investment. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. In those foundational systems.

Well, and it was helpful though, that when I had done my coach certification back in 2020, I had a website, I had my URL, I had my domain name. So some of that stuff I already had done. I had a logo. It's being refreshed based on who I am and what I'm doing now for coaching. But I had a lot of that figured out that I've committed to and haven't changed. So that was helpful. Wow.

That is cool. What have the challenges been for you?

It has been harder to convert than I expected. Yeah. Which is fair. I mean, I'm not trying to do cheap, easy coaching. That's just gonna spend my time. Like I'm trying to do coaching programs that have an investment. So that sales cycle is different. It has been interesting to see who's responded to my outreach and who hasn't. That's been a bit surprising. Not in a good way. I'm not making a story of it. It's just been interesting to see who's receptive and learning from those messages. What is the message I put out there to somebody has been, but that's been challenging to sort of figure that out.

Yes.

And I think the other thing that's been a bit challenging is constantly having content. For LinkedIn.

Yes.

Which is such a key platform. I'm getting better at it. Yeah. And I think for me, what's been really helpful is doing the work to go, who is the client I wanna work with? Mm-hmm. What is the thing I wanna offer? So now that I've worked out my 3 Dynamics of Trust and how that works for me, that makes all my content so much easier. Mm-hmm. Because I've got a really big passion point to go, okay, this is the thing. Yeah. And this is why it matters, what problems it solves, that kind of thing. But that's been an interesting thing for sure.

Yeah. Look, thank you for sharing that because, you know, I think all coaches starting businesses have these experiences and often we don't talk about it, do we? There's a lot of things that are unspoken. It's a bit like when we leave jobs, right? Sometimes it's not, we don't talk about why we left or we don't talk about this idea of values misalignment, for example. But also I really want to encourage people in business. Business to talk about what is hard, because if we don't, we're never going to create this world where, you know, particularly women, I think, feel confident starting those, because we normalize that there will be the hard bits as well. And I think that's so important. I think what I really hear in your story is that none of these challenges are about, can I do the work and do it well, right? These are all about, how do I put in place, how do I experiment with strategies that will make this a more systemized, predictable business that, that I'm growing. So yeah, thank you for sharing those. I really—

yeah, I think the one thing also that I just want to— because I've said this to a few people— coaching is, coaching is a giant umbrella of 100 different ways you can coach. For me, and I have some friends who are doing coaching and I feel like they're doing a lot of different things. For me, it was really important to go, wait, I actually don't want to do this thing and I don't want to do this think this is the thing I want to do, which makes it more sustainable for me.

Yeah.

Over time. So that sets me up for a longer-term goal.

Yeah.

And again, that was part of me just going, what is right for me and knowing what I needed.

Yeah.

So I think for a lot of new coaches, that's something to think about is like, what do you actually want to be doing as a coach? It's a really important question.

Absolutely. Because so many coaches could literally do anything. And I put you in that bucket, right? You could train anyone, you could teach anything, you could I can coach anyone, any team, but there's that— I love to help people apply some filters to that, which is what is the work you want to do? What is the impact you want to have? And what are people going to pay for? You know, I mean, that sounds a bit crass to put it like that, but actually, where is there a market really, I guess, is what I'm saying, for what you have to add. And we must think about all of those things because any one of them in isolation probably isn't going to cut the mustard.

Yeah.

And also I think there's benefit, like you say, to having some boundaries around it because it helps you to have both internal focus and feel really grounded and anchored in these things that you want to do. But also, yeah, what content am I putting out there? Well, if it's everything in the world, then how am I possibly to decide what I'm going to post on LinkedIn? But if we have these guardrails, it makes it a little easier.

What about—

what are you most proud of since you've started your business?

Mm-hmm. I know, I could have done this one ahead of time. What am I most proud of? Committing to myself and not feeding the fear that sometimes arises. If I have a week where people aren't responding or my meetings get canceled, I had one week a couple weeks ago that 3 people just no-showed me on calls that they had scheduled and I was like, Is it me? And then there's the saboteur gremlin that starts to get really loud.

Yeah.

So I'm proud of like shutting that down. And sometimes there's like those fear things. People are well-meaning. It's Jen, what about this? What about this? No, I don't wanna do that anymore. Yeah. So I think I'm just really proud of sticking to my guns about this one and going, yeah, this is what I'm gonna do. Yeah.

And I think that really reminds me of how much this, like being in business is not just about learning to be in business, it is quite a developmental process for ourselves, right? We learn a huge amount about self-regulation, about emotional management, about doing things that are uncomfortable. And I think that that's such a brilliant example of like, how do I stay grounded and anchored in who I am, what I'm doing, even when I'm getting all this messaging from other people, and even when there's people who don't show up. And by the way, that will happen to all of us. That still happens to me. That's just, it's just part of it, and it's a shitty part, but it's a part. But yeah, I really love that. Thank you. And we should be proud of that, right? We should be proud of this development, this growth that we go through as people. I think I really love it. Now, one of the things that I did just want to ask you about is obviously you mentioned creativity is a big part of you and your story, and that for you it felt like it was a better fit to explore that more in personal rather than professional life. Although clearly we can't separate it. What does that look like for you? Like, how do you stretch your creative muscles?

So I am a prolific quilter. I make a lot of quilts. Amazing. Uh, so I do a lot of sewing. I should have brought props. I did not bring props. And just 2 weeks ago, and I'm on the board of the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild, and just 2 weeks ago we held our first ever quilt show. And so I did all the marketing communications for that. Some people locally might have gotten tired by my emails every other day about it, but, and even just before this, I was writing the monthly newsletter for the guild. So it's like a completely different kind of messaging to very different people. But the quilting part of it, it's interesting cuz every once in a while, especially now, people are like, Jen, you can make some money selling your quilts. And I was like, but then it's not fun anymore. Then it's a business. Yeah. And for me, that's been really clear to me. It needs to be fun and for me. Yeah. To do those quilts separately. And whether it's, I'm making a bag for something, I'm doing it cuz I want to. And actually this Christmas I made all of my Christmas presents for everyone.

Aw, that's great.

Um, which felt really good to give my, and I was able to give myself the time to do that when I was working full time. I feel like I never would've been able to do that.

It's almost the biggest gift, right? Is yeah. Giving yourself time to do that.

Yeah. So the quilting is really my big creative outlet. Yeah.

And how do you see your creative outlets and that side of you influencing the business you?

Well, I named my business Create with Jennifer Jell. This idea of creativity and creating who you want to be, creating the life you want to live, creating the leader you want to be. So there's creativity in there. It's also very multicolor logo. It's a freedom of expression that there's this evolution we all go through. You're not the same person yesterday and today and tomorrow. You get to evolve and make little things evolved over time. I also have a certified Zentangle teacher. The more you talk to me, the more you find out about all my random certifications. I love it. Uh, which is a mindful doodling process that you can do. And sometimes that's actually really good to bring into a team setting because there's examples of that work where you can have people do a tile that's 3.5 inches square. But when you put it all together, it becomes something beautiful. Each individual one, people can go, well, this isn't perfect. Yeah. But together, when you look at like 50 of them, you're like, wow, this is the most amazing piece of art we've ever done. Which is really what teamwork is. How does the collective come together and each person gets to be responsible for a piece of that. So there's also this tangible creativity that I can bring to some of those team workshops as well. And it gets people out of their head because people, adults, often have these like art scars where somebody once told you that the sky can't be pink or you can't sing. And we, we stop being creative as adults. So I also love these ways to bring it into some of those settings as well as to get people to, to play a little bit. Creativity is about play and growth and expression. Yes. Yeah.

I love that. And I'm really, that's definitely a goal for me to explore my creativity more. And so, yeah, I love all these ideas. I think I can be a quilter, but I could imagine myself doing Zentangle.

Did you say Zentangle? Yeah, super easy. Tons of videos on YouTube. Okay. The other thing too that comes up for me in creativity is I'm a Co-Active trained coach and in Co-Active training, when you're doing it, you have to come up with your life purpose statement. My life purpose statement is I'm the box of crayons that unleashes joyful creativity. Oh, and the crayons are so specific because it's the first thing we used as a child. Like, what if your creative expression right now was to go pick up a crayon? Yeah, there's no rules. You can't be in the lines. It's chunky, it's imperfect. So how do you go back to something as simple as a crayon? Yeah, and just explore that. And as an adult, what does that feel like to go back to the thing that gets handed out at kids' restaurants to draw on the placement. I think that's really fun. But also as a leader and as a manager, creativity was like, how did you create a new pivot table or VLOOKUP in Excel? How did you create a new presentation deck? That's all creativity. Creativity doesn't have to be the incredible art behind you or what hangs on our walls. Creativity can be just like, how did you think about something different?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember I've debriefed a lot of Hogan assessments in my time. And one of the values is aesthetics. And a lot of times people are like, oh no, I'm not creative. I'm not artistic. And it doesn't take long to, to dive beneath that and to say, actually, maybe you don't paint, but what about the way you think about problem solving? Like maybe that's your creative thing. And I would ask these questions and invariably people who were scoring high on that had this incredible cake baking side hustle where they would do incredible decorations or they were passionate about design and home design and always that there is something there. It's just about finding your way. I love that.

I love that.

And yeah, I feel inspired, so I need to do more of that. You would not be surprised that my bookshelves are loaded with all sorts of creative tools and equipment for things that I have dabbled in and then have like this graveyard of printmaking, watercolor, you name it. So I have no excuse.

I have a closet full of all of that.

So yeah, I justify it by saying it's for my daughter, but the truth is it's absolutely for me. Okay. So tell me, obviously we've been working together in the accelerator for a while. What have you found most helpful in terms of what we've done?

I, one, I love all the content to give me a framework, like what's next. And I get to do it on my own time and figure that out and having references that I can go back to over again. Like from having a business to business sales call, I can go back and look at those masterclasses as like a refresher. I love having the content available. For when I need it. I appreciate deeply the accountability check-ins on Monday. And then on Fridays going, what did I do? Because it's just so important to, for me to claim something that I am accountable to someone other than myself. The truth is if I don't do it, nobody's gonna come after me, but it just feels like there's a bigger accountability. Yeah. Especially as I work by myself. That's been really important to me. And the community and just learning from everyone. I am somebody who shows up to a lot of the calls. I don't always ask a lot of questions, but I'm definitely learning from other people. I'm taking notes. I'm applying it to the things that I'm doing. So there's also the safety, like I don't have to share if I'm not in a place to share or ask a question, but it's also just such a great learning experience to go, okay, what are these people, other people doing? Normalize some of the challenges we go through and everybody's going through them. Oh yeah, that happened to me. Yeah. Yeah. So I love that. And my favorite thing is the asset review and having access to you and the team to give us feedback on stuff before we send it, especially. Every time you send out a proposal, I'm like, wait, does this sound right? Yeah. Spend so much time on it. Getting those feedback to do those extra little tweaks is so helpful. I got feedback today on my LinkedIn profile, so I'll be doing some updates this week. Excellent. But that's also super helpful is just to have somebody else's perspective who's less close to it. Yes. To give like feedback. And I will admit I am one of those people who always wanted to be the A+ and not have corrections and stuff. So for me, it's been interesting to go, okay, this is safe for me to get feedback. It's coming from a place of helping and support. It's not criticism. I didn't do bad. It's an evolution. Yeah, so for me it's been very safe to do that, but I will admit it's also been a pivot for me to accept feedback, positive or otherwise, to go tweak it. Yeah. Yeah.

You're not, you're not on your own. I do hear that. And you're like, I'm always conscious that all the feedback that we give is given with care and kindness and, but we don't pull our punches either, right? As if we have feedback, we're going to give it to you with the intention that you get to choose, right? You're ultimately the owner and you can take what works and leave what doesn't. But yeah, I created that part for that very reason, which is that when we start our business, we are in a vacuum, right? It's like, I'm putting this out there. I don't know if this is what is done in the industry. And so I wanted to make sure that, yeah, no one has to be in that space.

Yeah. Sorry. One other thing I just want to mention that for me has been super helpful, and I will say it was a big portion of why I chose this program because there's— a ton of coaches out there for coaches building businesses— is I like the global network. I love having people from around the world on these calls. Yeah. And having this bigger perspective. I do have a network of coaches through CTI groups or ICF Toronto that are local. But what is that bigger perspective of people who have also made the shift from corporate into coaching? But I love hearing what's going on elsewhere. I learn about different research. I learn about different things just from having that global perspective.

That was really important to me too. And the diversity, I think, that we have in this group, it's global, it's different perspectives, it's people different in every way you could possibly imagine. So I love that too. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to have a favorite part, but that's definitely my favorite part. So from a practical perspective, what tip would you give to a new coach starting a business?

Patience, kindness to yourself. Not going to happen as fast as you want it to. No, I think is the truth. But I think the biggest thing for me was going back and figuring out who is the client I wanna work with. Yeah. And what is the thing I wanna do? Mm-hmm. Because it made everything else easier once I figured that out. And so my content's easier, how I update my website, how I update my LinkedIn. Everything becomes easier once you truly figure out who your client is and what it is that you want to do and the outcomes you want to see in the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Love that. That's such a great tip. Okay, so to wrap up, can I ask you some rapid fire questions?

Sure.

If you could coach, if you could coach anyone in the world, who would it be?

See, I didn't actually prep this one. I think I don't have a name, but I love like working with women who are like past 50 who just want a little bit more and want to achieve more. And Break those glass ceilings. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it.

That's how I want to coach. Yeah.

Yeah. That's—

yeah.

And I reckon that there are plenty of those people that we bring in. Do you have a podcast or a book that you would recommend to other coaches listening in?

So I did bring prop for this. This is the book. It's called How Good Humans Sell.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. By Katherine Brown. It was referred to me by my EQI 2.0 trainer, Drew Bird. But it's really about like how to have real conversations with people and what to listen for. As you're doing these sales conversations. Because again, for me, the selling one-on-one and selling myself has been something I wanted to do. So great book.

Brilliant.

It's B2B sales. It's fantastic. Yeah, that would be the book.

And if you were to share one of your most essential tools or pieces of software that make your business better, what would that be?

My to-do list. Does that count?

Yes, it does.

And my highlighter so I can cross things off because it is so good for me just to cross things off. It sounds so simple. No, putting it all in one place has been really important to getting things done. And the other tool I use a lot is OneNote because as I'm on a call, I can open different notebooks and take all my different notes and it's searchable. Yeah. And I do, and I can get it from my phone. I can get it from my computer, get it from my tablet. So you put all those links to things I want to go back to, all of the different notes, conversations. For me, that's been pretty essential to remember. Oh yeah, I want to add land acknowledgement to my website. I haven't done that yet, but it's on a list that is there. So when I get there, it's all in one place. It's not in my notebook, my hard copy, my paper notebook. It's Yeah, I can find it all. It's easy to organize things there.

Oh, that is brilliant. Jen, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I really deeply appreciate your insights. I think there's a lot that is going to be super inspiring for coaches listening in. Thank you.

Thank you for having me.