We are very happy to introduce you to the talented and engaging owner of Jessica Health Life Wellness Coaching. The tagline for Jessica’s business is: “Energy is Clarity & Joy!” and I think her many happy clients will agree with that sentiment. She shares with us her thoughts on growing a business and balancing life.

In a few sentences, this is what my business does:

I help men & women create the healthier lifestyle they desire to have but have been putting off for a long time because they feel stressed, burned-out, unmotivated, overwhelmed, too tired, or feel they are just too busy to get started.

A healthier lifestyle can mean many different things to people, health can be physical, mental, spiritual, career, relationships or money. My work serves to help people who feel a sense and need for improvement in any of those areas but just cant seem to get going, or they do start the work for change but cannot seem to stick to it.

The work I get to do is about reigniting their energy to gain the clarity that opens the path to discovering the practical and meaningful ways that could make a large impact on their life for the healthier lifestyle they dream of. My clients and I work together once a week for 12 weeks through a proven, structured program that helps them move form their current state to their future state, by resetting their energy levels, and then work to re-wire and hardwire new ways of looking at life and doing things, that ultimately give my clients the advantage of establishing long term habit change and feel joy again!

My typical work environment is:

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to work from anywhere that I want. I get to work from my home, from a park bench, a coffee house, the beach, or while on vacation at a family member's home. I love that I can be accessible to my clients anytime and that I am not confined to one physical space that would restrict me to connecting with my clients only when at that place. This has allowed me to establish work life balance so that I am not only there for my clients but also can be easily accessible to my children.

The training or education that is required for my type of business is:

This type of work does require some education and certification. There are several educational opportunities out there for Coach training and it’s also a matter of deciding what type of coach you want to be; for example: health, life, financial, spiritual, relationship, weight loss, functional nutrition, business, leadership and more. Many programs offer the training and certification to meet the unique needs of any of these specific areas. Be sure to do your research on the various programs, including the program's accreditations.

To me, being part of the gig economy means:

The gig economy, also known to me as freelance, contractor, or consultant opportunities, is an amazing way to earn a living. I feel it allows me to magnify and leverage my gifts and skills, particularly those that serve and impact people's lives. The freedom to design, manage and execute my work in a way that fully aligns with my own values and vision, allows me to the reap the rewards and benefits of the soul satisfying work that comes with helping people in meaningful ways.

Another critical benefit of this type of independent work for me is having my own schedule, which gives me the work-life balance I desire so that I can enjoy my personal life with my husband and kids. Working a traditional 9-5 job, which I have done for many years, has always felt like it confined me with limits on the use of my gifts and time, which could truly benefit others as well as getting to enjoy my family. Working in the gig economy allows me to have much more control in how I spend my time.

The benefits of my type of work are:

The best things about doing what I do is that I get to design my work, as my own boss, and work during the hours of the day when I am most productive. People vary in their preference as to when they find themselves to be most productive. I use this concept with my clients as well when we work on linking pleasure with certain activities as part of habit change. For example, this is not as easy for some people as it is for others to get up at 5am to exercise, and that is ok! Then we schedule movement at the time of day when we are most energized, for some, that is in the evening.

This is the same with work productivity. Unfortunately, 9-5 jobs do not allow for this type of energy flow to be leveraged for the sake of productivity. While I love to work during my own pockets of energy flow in my day, my clients also love being able to engage in my services during times of the day that they are not constrained by their own responsibilities. It's a win-win for everyone as I own my schedule. It is one important perk of working in the gig economy. I get to schedule time for myself to recharge anytime in the day, so that I can keep giving my best to my clients, and my husband and kids.

The difficulties I encountered starting a business were:

The most difficult thing is learning how to be disciplined and structured in driving the activities needed to generate revenue, and of course, ultimately profit. Not having the traditional 9-5, you also don't have your agenda already defined for you. You are solely responsible for dictating what the day needs to get done in order to have a business. This took some time to get used to and a lot of learning on how to get organized to stay productive and to be efficient and effective in starting and growing a business.

When you work for yourself, every day counts towards the productivity needed to generate business. Staying focused on this daily requires strong organizational skills so as to not become distracted, or evaluating every option out there on how to do the variety of tasks you need to learn about.

One other piece I found difficult was the constant effort in not falling into some of the common traps of solopreneurship: discouragement, rejection, comparisons, and the imposter syndrome that inevitably takes over when the reality of the hard work does not yield instantaneous results. The work of a solopreneur in the gig economy takes persistence, patience and perseverance.

If these are not your strong areas then you must learn to embody them, which is not a small feat. These are all very common experiences for new solopreneurs. They are often what leads to many quitting before they should, and thereby never seeing success. It's about learning how to persevere and staying motivated at the less glamorous times.

The way I use/leverage social media is:

I use Social Media to help the world get to know me, what I do, and what level of expert I am on the subject that I offer help with. Social media helps to build brand trust. I find social media to be very helpful and full of opportunities to be creative, it does ignite learning opportunities that can be very valuable in the long term for your business.

The best thing to do when starting a business and using social media as a development tool is to pick just one or maybe two platforms and learn them well. They all work very differently from each other and if you're not paying attention then its just like you're shooting fish in a barrel.

In other words just focus on one or two social media platforms, learn how they work and how their algorithms treat your content so that you are making quality content that will drive interest to your service or product.

Integrating technology into my business is:

For me, this was not too problematic. Technology has generally come easy for me, but I can see how challenging it can be for others. My biggest piece of advice is: never be afraid to spend money to hire someone who knows how to do something, when you don’t. It is money very well spent when you've done your research and find someone reputable to assist you.

I am a huge advocate for outsourcing tasks and opportunities that are just not in your wheelhouse. When you do try to do things that do not come very easy for you, you will spend a lot of energy trying to do something, and that is energy taken away from the areas where your gifts do lie, which is referred to as opportunity cost: the loss of potential gain with one opportunity when you choose another activity.

Technology can honestly make your life much easier. If you struggle with it at first, my advice is to stick with it, and learn to use it. As your business grows you will not be able to manually track all of your work and your customer's needs and experiences. It is worth the "growing pains" of learning how to integrate the technology into your business.

"Making it" and success in the gig economy to me means:

It means that I am consistently generating income for my household for the work that I am independently doing, and have even more time to just be - be with my family, be with myself, or with friends and enjoying the true nature that life has to offer: enjoying other people, cultures, experiences and nature. Then I will know that I have "made it.”

At that point I will have systems in place generating outcomes for me that are helping me to be profitable while at the same time allowing me to participate in what our earth has to offer. Then I am no longer wasting time chasing clocks, commuting to and from work, and missing out on any of my kids' experiences. That is when I will declare that "I've made it!"

The way I balance work and personal time is:

Work and personal life balance is critical to me. This is part of the work that I help my own clients with as well. Without having quality personal time for self-care, then we will always only have work time. This mentality is actually self-destructive and a hinderance to achieving any progress one hopes for. When we only give to what is outside of us and not care for our own mental, physical and spiritual well being, then what will we have left to offer the rest of those around us?

All that is left at this point is sheer survival, the need to meet our most basic needs: food, water, rest, security, love and belonging. But all of that can't even be met because we are uncontrollably disrupted by the constant biochemical state of stress we are in at this point. So even the most primal state we default to can't be served. This is where physical illness, nervous and mental breakdowns set in.

I balance my work and personal time by ensuring that activities and time important to me personally, are just as important as a meeting with a client or a vendor or event related to my business. It requires mindful scheduling of activities and honoring the amount of work I can, can't , should or shouldn't complete in a day.

One thing I personally had to work on was to let go of the superwoman mentality. Someone once said to me "Just because someone puts a ladder in front of you doesn’t mean you have to scurry up it!" There isn't time to do everything, but there is plenty of time to do what's most important.

So I focus on the activities, people and opportunities that matter the most. Those take top priority and then everything else will just have to fall into place where and if it can. This process starts by making sure that I recognize and understand what is important to me and then staying mindful to those along the way. Part of that is being comfortable with saying no to some things.

The pandemic impacted my business by:

The pandemic had an impact on many people. The quarantine process and isolation measures left a lot people with a mandatory time-out and not a lot to do but to self-reflect/assess. People had to check in with themselves during this time and it left them with a lot of questions they have had a hard time answering. They suddenly found themselves not knowing as much about themselves as they thought they did.

If it wasn't their personal life's questions that they couldn’t answer, then they were questioning and scared about their health. This has led a lot of people to seek out the partnership of a health and life coach. The pandemic has actually created a larger need for health and life coaches than ever before. Many people are questioning and challenging their "status quo." Many people are determined more than ever to take control of their health.

The pandemic has actually magnified the value of what a Health and Life coach can offer.

We offer people an approach to their health that reaches deeper than the surface. People generally do not worry about their health deep down until something goes wrong and they need a doctor or a hospital. Health coaches help people look through a different lens to their health, they guide a person to understand and evaluate in a meaningful way how their health habits are impacting them below the surface.

With this in mind the client and the coach work together to incorporate, or mesh into their daily routine, the habits that are achievable and sustainable for long-term health benefits. Life coaches serve as guides, cheerleaders and accountability partners as they help their clients hone in on what it is they truly want out of life and then work to set the goals and stepping stones to getting there.

The way that diversity impacts my business is:

Diversity is positive and beautiful; it makes what I do fun, exciting, and keeps me growing and learning while I help others! I have always loved, as a registered nurse, meeting and collaborating with thousands of people over the course of 22 years while in that line of work. When you meet so many people you inevitably get to work with a variety of cultures, nationalities, and customs.

I have had the opportunity to learn from people at different points in time from different points of view, such as a caregiver of health to my patients, or receiver of orders from a doctor, to comforter of friends and families of the ill, to collaborator along side other members of the healthcare team. The diversity amongst those individuals has shown me a lot. It has strengthened me in grace, patience and compassion. The journey of the last 22 years as a nurse along with these experiences has taught me not only about my own values but also the values of others. It has taught me how to leverage these varying views to help one another. That has been the biggest impact and lesson for me.

As a result of my experiences in the past years, when I work with my clients, it is important for me to recognize and understand their perspectives and values as we work towards creating new healthy habits. Their own heritage and customs oftentimes offer strong influences that define and shape behavior and habits in general.

It is important to recognize and respect these varying perspectives to generate success for my clients. I cannot implement my services with a one-size-fits-all mentality. For any coach to approach their clients this way will only create less-than-stellar results. Respecting diversity allows me to work in partnership with my clients, and to learn together how to adapt to what a healthier lifestyle looks like for that individual.

The future of my business and/or the gig economy is:

I am so excited about the future and how health and life coaching will flourish in the coming years. While much suffering has come from the recent pandemic it has also opened the eyes of many!! People are now, more than ever before, asking for help.

In a time with so much technology and a society that has come to basically live through social media with audiences of hundreds, or thousands, or for some - millions, we have created a world in which we experience isolation as a "norm". However, the inevitable reality is that we are not made to live in isolation. Loneliness can be a slow poison if we are not careful. This is because it is in our DNA, since primal days, that we must be part of a community, working together.

In today's world many are benefiting from health and life coaches because having someone on your side who is holding your vision for you and helping you to get there, yields the biggest return in people's lives! Health and Life coaches can help people get out of their heads and out of the digital world. It allows them to have meaningful and practical conversations that lead to making the right decisions for themselves, yielding fast results and ultimately reigniting energy and joy back into their lives.

As for the future of my business I look forward to its growth. My goal is to offer coaching services not just through my own personal services. I also want to be able to offer our communities a diverse panel of coaches specializing in various areas of life, open doors for them.

Is there a question we didn't ask, that we should have asked:

What's my favorite color? - Answer: Orange :)

One final piece of useful advice I would give to others is:

Connect with the higher power, learn to trust yourself, take a chance on yourself, and then, trust the process!!

To reach out to Jessica or to learn more about her business: