567 Jenny Fenig:

Well, we left 2020 behind … yet the very real fears and anxieties swirling around us followed us into 2021, with Covid raging to new heights and our very democracy threatened in this country by insurrectionist mobs of white supremacists and conspiracy  theorists. Tomorrow is a new day with a new president and much must change to heal the country. That change begins from within, who we are being, and embodying compassion, truthfulness and love in what we do, say and think.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who learned powerfully in her own life that we all have the power internally to manifest positive change externally – in our businesses, our lives, and our society.

Jenny Fenig is the founder of Magic Makers Coach Certification, and she trains professionals in the craft and business of intuitive coaching. She leverages the magic of aligning with nature and “co-creating with the cosmos” as she puts it … to empower creative women entrepreneurs and corporate leaders to increase their confidence, impact, money and time-freedom by mixing modern with ancient practices.

I can’t wait to introduce you to Jenny! First…

Jenny Fenig helps you amplify your results by doing less.

Sounds good, right? Her magic is all about leveraging your intuition and connectedness to the cycles of nature to find peace and self-acceptance on your journey. Her online coaching and training business helps women coaches, consultants, creative, and wellness professionals to increase their confidence, impact, money and time-freedom by mixing modern with ancient practices, so they can develop magnetic brand messages and transformational programs.

Today we’re going to talk about how to find your power and purpose from within, how tragedy and failures can be welcomed as the catalyst for your personal transformation and success, plus how to find true confidence to master your sales … achieving more by working less.

Now back to Jenny Fenig. Jenny began her work as a corporate workshop leader and motivational speaker, helping forward-thinking companies solve employee challenges around work-life balance especially as it relates to working from home while children learn at home. Her presentations help redesign the paradigm around time, energy, relationships and results-driven priorities.

Before she took the leap into entrepreneurship, Jenny was a public relations executive and event producer elevating the visibility and message of the biggest brands and thought leaders in the world. She’s also the author of “Get Gutsy”, host of the “Get Gusty” podcast, and was named a Silver Stevie Award Winner for Coach of the Year.

So let’s dig in to what it means to “co-create with the cosmos” and put on our wings with the inspiring Jenny Fenig.

Melinda Wittstock:         Jenny, welcome to Wings.

Jenny Fenig:                      Thanks so much. Super excited to be with you.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m excited to talk to you too. I’m really intrigued by how you do what you do by combining modern and ancient practices. Let’s start there and talk to me about how that works in practice.

Jenny Fenig:                      Okay. I love talking about this. Well, when I say that, it means that there’s so much wisdom around us at all times. And we live in this time with technology, which is fabulous. That’s how we’re connecting right now. But technology isn’t the end all be all. It’s not the ultimate source. The ultimate source is being out in nature, remembering what we know. And it’s helping us tap into our own true nature. So for me, I mean, right now I live in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, I literally live in the woods. I’m looking around every window in my office, I see trees everywhere. And they’re sending messages to me of just stand strong. Stand strong, stand tall, know who you are.

So I get outside as much as I can. I really take cues from nature. I receive so many messages when I’m just outside walking, deeply breathing, whether it be with my dog, with my kids, with myself. Because so much of our work is being able to deliver the message that’s ours to deliver. We have a unique contribution to make. And we don’t want to sound like everyone else. There’s no point. We want to be true to what is flowing through us. We are channels. So when you can really tune into the magic of nature and start living more seasonally. Like literally know what season you’re in, whether it’s wet season you’re in your life, because we have different life seasons, but then what’s the season of nature where you live right now, and start taking some cues.

At this point, we’re in the fall here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the leaves have fallen. I was just looking outside in my garden. I was riding my Peloton before our conversation, and I can have a window outside and I see this garden that I worked on over the summer. And all the leaves have just fallen, there’s this pile. And the plants are going to bed, they’re not blooming and doing their beautiful colors at this point. But I know that they will again. And so it’s that that knowing that we can look outside, we can get a lot of information from nature and from our own practices.

So for me I started my career in New York City and I worked hard and played hard, and it was intense, and it was fun, and it was exciting. And I had big clients and big budgets and I would travel around the world. And it was super interesting until it wasn’t. Eventually, I decided that I was tired of burning the candle at both ends. And I wanted to explore my yoga practice more deeply. And I decided to follow this weird hunch that I had that told me, Jenny, sign up for a 200-hour yoga teacher training. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that. But it opened me up to a whole new world, a world where I could really know myself and listen to my own thoughts and be able to make some pretty bold decisions that weren’t really logical, but were right.

So the way I incorporate this into my business is I just really trust those nudges. I trust that information that’s flowing through. And then with the modern practices, you build it in with the tech. You build it in with a solid strategy, having a strong team, and really being able to what I call, co-create with the cosmos. So really tuning in, yeah. And so I do a lot of work with the moon, I’m always looking at … I always know what phase the moon is in. And I’m able to line up the energy of the moon in particular with my own energy with the actions that I’m taking, so I can get more done with less effort.

Melinda Wittstock:         That is so beautiful. I think when we’re really connected to nature, that’s when we can get into flow. If on the other hand, we’re all up in our heads with no kind of separation between our thoughts, we’re disconnected. And being disconnected really has a cost.

Melinda Wittstock:         One of the things that I’ve noticed is, the more I’ve gone on this same journey that you describe, that my best ideas come to me when I’m not “working”. Like I’m hiking in the woods with a dog, or I could be in the shower, or I could be doing yoga, or something else, meditating, something else other than the actual work. And that’s where the inspiration comes from, and then you put it into action. Is that kind of how it works for you?

Jenny Fenig:                      Absolutely. I get ideas, yeah, most of them are not me sitting at my desk, looking at the screen going, let me figure this out. I figure it out through movement. And really, like you mentioned with a hiking, with the shower, with being out in nature, doing yoga, it’s like moving your bodies. What I have discovered is, I mean, it’s been around for forever, it’s not like I discovered, I just discovered it myself, it’s connecting with the elements, fire, water, air, and Earth. They live inside all of us, we have a unique constitution, and we are a combination of those energies and those elements. And when we consciously bring them into our lives, we have the greatest ideas.

So then, our quest is to trust the ideas and to action them. I’ll get an idea like, you know what, I should reach out to that person. I feel like I want to include her in this thing that I’m working on, or I feel like she’d be a perfect fit for this program. I’m just going to reach out to her. I’m just going to just see how she’s doing or what have you. And maybe it’s connected to something in my personal life. And I think for a lot of people, they get those downloads, they get those ideas, but then they don’t trust them. They think well, what if the person says no, what if the person doesn’t respond. They go from a place of fear, and doubt and wanting to shield themselves from disappointment.

So the key, and that’s really been the journey I’ve been on, and that’s why these practices are so important, is to trust those downloads. Trust the ideas and to know that the best ones, yeah, you’re typically not going to get them sitting at your desk, looking at the computer. Like when I’m sitting at my desk, working with the computer, it’s usually when I’m putting it into play. I’m going, okay, let me send the email, let me put that task in our project management tool. We Asana in my business, which I just live by, it’s so helpful.

And so I’m making those moves. Or maybe I’m writing the thing that I’m going to send out to my community. I might have gotten it started on a piece of paper, I’m a big believer in pen to paper, I think there’s something so cathartic about using those tools, and then moving to tech and chiseling the message. But yeah, we got to get out. It’s also just great permission for people to live your freaking life. Live your life. You do not get a pride is for sitting at your desk the longest number of hours. It’s just not worth it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. There was a transition for me from being kind of a human doing to a human being, is how I like to say it. But I used to, like so many women in business, I was ruled by my to-do list, and my to do list was never finished. And you’d get to the end of the day, and you wouldn’t have a sense of satisfaction because your list was never finished. And I kind of transitioned from that to an intentions list, which was more about law of attraction, but then from there into what I call an inspiration list.

So when I do my morning meditation, for instance, I will get a download or something about what is the most important thing that I have to do? If I did only one thing today, what would be the thing that would advance my business the most, or where is the most leverage kind of in my day? I tend to act on those. And when I do, magic happens. Like a lot of things that would have been on a to do list, sort of get done like without me having to do them.

Jenny Fenig:                      They just get handled. I know. All the sudden, it gets handled.

Melinda Wittstock:         It is so hard to explain this to somebody who hasn’t experienced it, because it just seems like magical, kind of like the name of your company. I’m just beginning to realize it’s just sort of the law of the universe. When you tap into it, it’s amazing. Right? And so what was your process in getting to that discovery? I mean, you mentioned that you were doing yoga and you have these downloads about your intuition. So give me an idea of like, what’s a good example of that?

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah. Well, my process was … It was just really, a big part of my journey has been to extricate myself from the structure that I was taught I had to operate in. You come up and you’re taught things. You’re taught things in school, you’re taught things in jobs, you have managers and standard operating procedures that need to be followed. And I remember just feeling like, this is not sustainable. Like this is not healthy. I played the game for as long as I could, and it was just kind of that push and pull from inside of me going, this can’t be it. It just can’t be.

And a big piece of my story is that I experienced a good amount of trauma from a young age. When I was 16 years old, my 12 year old sister died from cancer. And then seven months later, my best friend’s brother died. And then about two years later, that best friend died. So I had three deaths in three years from the time I was 16 to 19 years old, and I didn’t have any guidance on how to handle that. Here’s how you heal from that and here’s some this and some that. I didn’t have therapy. I mean, I was just kind of like continuing to fumble forward, that’s the best way I can describe it.

Eventually, as I’m establishing my career in New York, and just taking cues from the people who were older than me, who were further along going, okay, well, they’re telling me to do that. So I’ll do it. And then just knowing that, I mean, we’re smart, we have our own wisdom. We might disagree with the status quo or what we’re seeing, and we can trust that. We can really trust that. So for me, it was just starting to put myself first and starting to really take care of myself, because that was not something that was really modeled. And I started like really mothering myself, and really taking that time, taking that time off going, I’m not going to work all these hours straight. I’m not going to work on weekends.

I mean, there were some times I needed to do that to get the job done. But I just kept listening to those voices, really that inner voice within, and I would make these moves that were bold. And people were going, “What? You’re quitting your job?” Last job I had in New York, it was a six figure position. I was very good at it. I was a conference producer. So my job was to create like a three-day event for business leaders. And it was really interesting. I got to design the agenda based on pain points and key challenges of people in that industry.

I would recruit the speakers, I had budget for keynote speakers, I had big name people on my stages, and I really enjoyed listening to them and watching them up there doing their thing. And towards the end of that ride, I just said, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’ve learned everything there is to learn. I didn’t have another job lined up. I didn’t say, okay, I’m going to go get a job in this other conference production company. I just literally quit. I just quit. And people were going, well, what are you going to do now? I really just said, I’m going to clear the decks, I’m going to figure it out.

And so those types of things where you just trust it, you just trust them. And I don’t suggest that to a lot of people, because that’s a really very bold move. And you need to ensure that you can handle that, you’ve got your pieces that you can pull on. But then as I journeyed forward as a business owner, it’s really so much of this, Melinda, is that you have to trust the thing that you see in your mind. You have to trust that. And you have to trust it even before it’s “real” even before there’s tangible proof. So right now I’m launching a program. I’m enrolling for this program of mine, and it’s really focused on helping my community become sought after speakers online. Online speakers.

Because here’s the deal, we’re still living during these wild COVID times and most online events and retreats, which I have hosted a good number during my life, they’re not happening right now. And we don’t know when they’re going to start happening again. And we can’t say, well, we’re going to have ours happen next month. It’s like things are shifting all the time, states have different regulations. And this year has been incredible because I have been tapped to deliver all these talks to corporations and organizations around the US. I was able to develop a collaboration and really become a consultant for this corporate wellness company, which is kind of the plus sides during this wild COVID year.

I have, I mean, this quarter alone have more than 50 talks booked all online. And I’ve been speaking for my whole career. But because I’ve been really deepening into this, this year, I said, “I want more women to do this. I want more women to know how to do this. So I’m going to lead a program I’m going to teach them.” And that’s what I do. I know something is incredible. I know something is life-changing, business-changing. I don’t want to keep it to myself, I want to teach. So I just said let’s go and I created this program and I just started breathing life into it. And all the voices in your head will come on and go, “What if no one signs up? What if no one wants to do it? What if people go, “No one signed up for her program. Can you believe that?”

You cannot let those voices rule you. You have got to trust this is the thing that I’m called for. Yes, I haven’t led this particular thing before. But there’s a first time for everything, let’s go. And so you just take those steps every single day. You reach out to people who you feel would be a fit, you put yourself out there. Sometimes you feel like you’re walking naked. I’m walking naked in the wilderness, and I’ve just got to say this thing and trust that it gets out there, that the right people hear the message. And then you do your part and you follow up and you have the conversations, and you put the message out, and you put the message out, and you put the message out, and you’re ready to receive the clients, you’re ready to receive the money.

Melinda Wittstock:         The steps reveal themselves to you once you start the steps, once you go on the journey. But if you think that you have to know everything, and it all has to be tied up in a pretty pink bow, and everything has to be in place. Well, that’s actually impossible. Because the whole journey of entrepreneurship is learning along the way. But it is a really interesting kind of personal growth journey, really being an entrepreneur.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Each failure, just to de stigmatize that word, or each challenge or each block. is an opportunity. What can I learn from this?

Jenny Fenig:                      Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         With one kind of door closes, so to speak, it just means that’s the wrong direction. So maybe if I just edge, pivot over here, maybe that’s the right one. So it’s like this constant kind of block and tackle I found in all the businesses that I’ve built.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah. And I think when you’re open to learning, and when you look at it not as a loss but as a learning, then you won’t really lose. And that’s just it. And to your point, I always say to my clients, don’t worry about step 27, you don’t know what that will be. Just take the next right step. And then the next right step. And as you said, they will emerge, they will just emerge. But so many women in particular, and that is my core audience, they freak out by that. I think, again, let’s look at the conditioning, how we were raised, how we were trained. It’s like that old dynamic of we have to know everything that’s going to happen, so that we can prepare seven weeks in advance. It doesn’t work like that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, women tend to kind of over prepare. I wonder if this goes all the way back to how we’re socialized and what we were like in first grade or whatever. Where the boys tend to just go at things and it doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to even look good. And they just kind of do it or they ask other people to help them without any issue around that. It doesn’t say anything bad about them if they ask for help, right?

Jenny Fenig:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Whereas women, I don’t know what it is, where this comes from, but we’re sort of acculturated to think that we have to do it all ourselves, we have to figure it out. That somehow we have to prove our competence or our value, or that we’re enough before we can even do something like that. But it’s just the doing of something like that is the thing that gives us the confidence in that. Right?

Jenny Fenig:                      Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         Over time.

Jenny Fenig:                      Totally. And I think women too deal with the perfectionism thing.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, god. Yes.

Jenny Fenig:                      If we ask for help, we’re weak. If we ask for help, they’ll know we’re not perfect.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, busted. Busted. They’re going to find me out. Oh, my God. All through my career, for the longest time, it didn’t matter whether I’d built a business to seven figures or eight figures, whether I’d like won … I’m a recovering journalist, too, by the way. So whether I’d won a Murrow Award or something, I always had this lingering doubt somewhere inside me that they’re going to find me out.

Jenny Fenig:                      Totally. Yeah, they’re going to know. They’re going to come knocking on the door, we found out.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s absurd.

Jenny Fenig:                      I know. I had someone in one of my programs recently wanting to have this initiative, put this thing on. In the online marketing space, coaching, consulting, there’s a lot of these, “challenges” that are held on social media in particular. And she goes, “I want to do something like that, but I don’t want to call it a challenge. But it’s kind of like that, but I don’t want to call it that. Do I need to call it that?” I ago, “No, you call it the thing that you want to call it.” No one is going to knock on your door and go, hey, I heard what you’re doing. That is a challenge. You have to call it that. But that’s what we think sometimes. Like, I see it, it seems like a lot of people do it and call it that. And if I don’t, there’s something wrong with me. I’m going to get in trouble. And you’re not.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. I mean, it’s a big mission of mine to really encourage women to think outside the box, and really leverage our uniquely feminine skills. And by feminine, I mean, divine feminine, like the feminine archetype, where we have this unique, innate ability to be a lot more collaborative, to be a lot more intuitive.

So when it comes to a business. It’s a good thing in the sense of creating really collaborative teams, really understanding people, coming at it with empathy, all these sorts of things. But also, when we think outside the box, when we think a little bit differently and apply those skills to a business model, for instance, we have the potential to be very innovative entrepreneurs. Like, very disruptive ones. Doing things that the men don’t see.

And we see, we connect the dots in a better way. And then we’re also much more motivated to do businesses that actually are for the social good, for the social impact. So what’s your view of where women are going next in entrepreneurship? Like, how can we kind of grow as a group to be more confident about building unicorn-sized businesses, investing in other women like just doing bigger things?

Jenny Fenig:                      That’s a great question. I think, again, with what’s happening just with the world, and with the United States, in particular, we have this disruption of so many industries. My husband has worked in the sports entertainment industry for so long, sports television, and that whole thing is exploding and not in a good way. It’s like it’s reinventing itself. The same with the educational landscape. You mentioned with homeschooling, we’ve actually were homeschooling pre-COVID, a whole other story. Which is so funny, Melinda, because when that first happened, my oldest son just literally refuse to continue going to second grade. Like he would not go into his classroom, and he was not willing to go to any other schools.

So it was terrifying and I didn’t talk about this publicly at first. And then eventually, I told my inner circle of clients, because I was so afraid that people would not take me seriously. Like, who’s going to hire me because now I’m homeschooling? How do you do that? Like, how do you work in homeschool? What is that?

Melinda Wittstock:         You’re a pioneer. I mean, you have the [crosstalk 00:22:39].

Jenny Fenig:                      I suppose I was. Well, it’s so funny. There’s all those talks I’m giving and I’ve done them so much this year. But in the fourth quarter alone, it’s gotten huge. One of my main topics to companies all over the US, homeschooling and work balance.

Melinda Wittstock:         No. No. I mean, that’s a biggie, because every woman … This thing is going to last for a while, right?

Jenny Fenig:                      It is.

Melinda Wittstock:         Like you said, we’re not going to know for a while.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         And climate change, there may be other ones behind this one. Like we don’t know. What I think is interesting about this particular period, and I’ve said this so many times on this podcast, that Coronavirus had a message for us.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         And it was like stop, think. Are you really in alignment? Are you really doing the thing that you want? By the way, we’re going to shine this really, really blinding bright light on every single thing that’s wrong with society. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re called now because you can go fix those things.

Jenny Fenig:                      Absolutely. And that’s what you see. You see these solutions rising up. In that particular space, we discovered a tool called outschool.com over probably the summertime, which we use a lot for my kids. I mean, it’s not just for homeschooled kids, it’s for anybody. And they have teachers come on, and they say I have this class I can teach. It’s a three week class, or it’s an ongoing thing, or I can be a tutor. And then Outschool is basically the technology platform that matches up educators with students, with learners. And then the platform helps you connect. You log on, you see the video, you can communicate back and forth. I just think it’s brilliant. And we use it a lot.

So I think for all of us, it’s just to look at what are the problems right now? What are the issues? And then how can you step in and provide a solution? That’s it. It’s how can you provide a solution. And for women, especially, I think a lot of us are called in the service space, because that’s just how we’re wired. We love it. And we tend to create businesses that we’re really passionate about. Like we’re really aligned with. And not just things that we know can make a lot of money, but we don’t care about. Like you just-

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, it’s hard. I think it’s hard for women just to do a business purely on a transactional basis.

Jenny Fenig:                      Totally. And I’m always amazed because you learn about these industries, or these areas that you’ve never even thought about before. Like, the plumbing supply industry or whatever. And these are businesses that will always be successful because you always need plumbing supplies, but still that’s not something that I would be particularly passionate about. So my insight for women is to really tune into how are you uniquely designed to serve? What are your family’s needs right now? Because this is reality. Like, this is reality. And for many women, it more falls on your plates. Okay?

Not always, and that’s definitely a generalization. My husband is very, very involved in there’s a lot of single moms out there, there’s a lot of people with various kinds of relationships going on in their lives. So it’s just you have to look at, what is your season right now? What is the season of your life right now? And how are you designing your business so that it can all fit. It can all fit and you don’t feel like you’re being so depleted that you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses or whoever else you’re trying to compete with.

Because we have these cycles and seasons of our lives. And I love that my business, I can turn it up in this area, I can turn it down over here. And I believe that when we open up space, we just trust. The speaking program that I told you about, that really came because I gave myself permission to really put a pause on running a type of program that I’ve been running for a long time, which is a mastermind. I’ve been running masterminds since 2011. Love them. Most of my masterminds, really all of them, had an in person element included. We would go on retreats to Costa Rica and Mexico and here in the Berkshires where I live and other places as well.

And right now, I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that. That’s okay. I know that time will come again. But as I wrapped up my most recent round of a mastermind, I said, usually it’s like you end one, you go right into another. Well, that has been my way. And I just said, No. We’re not going to do it like that. I feel complete right now. I feel complete and I’m going to open up space. Which is a little scary and it’s a little painful, because you might take a hit, you might take a hit financially. And I was willing to just step into what I call the void. Where I go, I don’t know what’s going to come into this space, but I trust something good will. And it did. And I’m so excited.

Like I’m invigorated. I feel like that’s where I can really make a difference. It’s very topical in an area that I know women are hungry for. And judging by the response that we’re getting right now, I’m just so overjoyed. I’m so overjoyed having these conversations. So my insight for women is to be very mindful about your season. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. And you can look at all the stuff that happens on social and everything’s curated. Okay?

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Jenny Fenig:                      You know what I mean? Like, okay, hold on. That’s fine. You just have to know. You have to understand what’s going on. And then to really make sure that you are being true to you. You are being true to you, and that who you’re talking to with your message. Who you’re talking to, you’re not talking to everybody. You’re not. And that’s where a lot of where I’ve needed to do a lot of work with my clients too. Again, this is those women, the perfectionism thing and the need or the perceived need [crosstalk 00:28:21].

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. And to please everybody. It’s impossible. [crosstalk 00:28:25]. But yeah, this whole thing that holds us back is this thing that we have to be liked by everybody. It’s actually kind of toxic it. Like it leads to complete and utter immobilization.

Jenny Fenig:                      It absolutely does. So it’s like, who are you talking to? And then at the same time, also be willing to look at your own blind spots. Where do you need to get stronger in an area where you just weren’t educated? And there’s only so long we can say, well, I didn’t know. Or my education didn’t cover that. I’ve been doing a lot of work this year, just really examining my own privilege, examining where I can be a stronger ally to people of color and engaging in my own education with black teachers and consultants and other women of color, to help me see how I can really be a part of this change that I believe we need to have in this-

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s amazing that you’re doing that. It’s so important. And it starts with curiosity. It starts with asking the questions and really listening.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah. And also being willing to be super uncomfortable and to screw it up. You’re going to screw it up. You’re going to say the wrong thing. But you know what, that’s how we learn. That’s how we learn. Like, look at our kids. My kids, I can see them out my sliding glass door, we have a trampoline out there. They’re trying flips. Do they always land the flip? No. But are they like, oh my god, I’m never doing the flip again. No. They’re going to just freaking try again.

They’re not going to come up with all these stories in their head. They’re just out there. They’re figuring it out. And so all of us, can we allow ourselves the space to do figure it out. But to really hold ourselves to a strong standard. Like, how can we contribute? And I think that’s something that women do really well where we look at how our business is aligned with our values and how we can really take a stand.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. So Jenny, all the moms who are listening to this podcast and heard you say that you are homeschooling before COVID, and you’ve got three quite young children. Okay. Everybody, we all want to know your secret. So how does this manifest for you? What has the past year have been like? And like, really, give us some pointers.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah, totally. Thank you. I love talking about this. I mean, like I said, it’s such a trip for me that I’m literally delivering this presentation and this talk to so many different organizations around the US. That’s been a nice treat to because my audience has been very entrepreneurial, my programs for women coaches, and transformational teachers and consultants, which I love. I love my community. And it’s been fun to come out and share these ideas and share these tips with so many other leaders around the United States in particular. So, yeah. I mean, homeschooling I joke, but not really joke. It’s true that it’s the thing that I always wanted that I never knew that I wanted.

I mean, when this first came down, we were throwing that curveball, I was terrified. I was angry, I was shocked, I tried to change it. I was like, this is wrong. This is a glitch, we have a malfunction in the system. We need to get it back to what it supposed to be, which is you need to go to school outside of the house. And he wasn’t having it. Just like COVID has been a great teacher, our children are wonderful teachers. So my son had a big message for me, and it has been an incredible road.

So the key for us, and what I share in my talks is that you really have to be ultra-organized, number one. And you need to understand that homeschooling or at home learning, distance learning, hybrid, whatever you’re in right now, it is not replicating the traditional classroom or schedule in your house. It’s not. And so if you’re trying to do that, you’re probably feeling really deflated and defeated and tired in that. And you might be mad at your kid, and you might be just really just angry at lots of people. So don’t do that. Don’t. That’s an old paradigm. That’s an old message that you’re still living under and you don’t need to.

You don’t need to say, okay, kids, you need to be doing your worksheets, or on the computer on a zoom call or doing whatever from 9:00 to 3:00. It’s just not how it needs to be. Learning happens everywhere all the time. Again, my kids are right there on the trampoline. They’re learning right now. They’re working out how to be in their bodies, they’re working out who gets to go next? And how does this happen? And how does that happen? So just be really open that the key is that you mix up a nice blend of what you feel your child needs when it comes to academics. And then what are those life skills that they need?

Life skills around making things, fixing things, coming up with creative solutions, helping out around the house. It doesn’t all lands on the parents. Like that’s not the rule. Do they know how to make a meal for themselves? What are those tools? What are their emotional skills, emotional intelligence? Do they know how to reach out to someone who to have a conversation or to send a thank you card or what have you? So we do really a lot of that blending. And then my husband and I have very much shared the days. And so we both work from home, we’re able to say, okay, for this half the day, you’re kind of overseeing the kids and from this other part of the day we switch.

And is it always nice and neat and orderly? No. Because life happens and sometimes you have to take a meeting at this time and you just work it out. Luckily, my youngest right now is in first grade. She’s not an infant or toddler, which would be a totally different situation. Let’s just be real. And so then we just very much say … What I had to get so strong on, Melinda, was to become a master of my time. And to really chunk my time and batch my tasks. And I don’t have time to waste. Like, I don’t have time to kind of just get distracted by this thing or that thing. A

And so a big piece of my message is be so discerning with what you focus on. And as you pointed out earlier, what must you get done today? Like what is the must? You must get this thing done today. Look at your week, what must you get done this week? And then be laser focused on that. Okay. So it helps you become just a much better steward of your time. And I believe that, as I shared those experiences from my younger life, those teenage years and experiences three very, very hard losses, that the big lesson from that, which is what I really weave into the talks that I give, is that time is the ultimate gift. It’s the ultimate. And so many people squander it. They squander, they don’t realize how valuable it is.

You realize it when your house goes, when someone close to you goes and you go, I didn’t know. So this is really our opportunity for all of us to say, especially for those of us who are homeschooling or have our kids home more than we’re used to, it’s a big shift and I want to witness everyone who’s in it right now, is simply see it as a gift. That you’re getting more time with your kids. And the biggest thing that you want to really focus on with your child is your relationship. Your relationship is more important than their test scores, than did they finish their assignments today?

I mean, obviously, they need to get certain things accomplished, of course, but did you do it at the expense of your relationship? Are things very strained? Is there just constant stress because a child can’t learn in that environment. And so we need to check our own selves as parents to make sure we’re not putting our stuff on them. They are their own people. And this is really an opportunity where I believe that the educational landscape is being rewritten right now. And you know why? It was freaking broken. That’s why it broke. It was broken, it didn’t work for a lot of people. It didn’t.

So this is an opportunity. For many, they chose to literally unenroll their child from school and say, I’m actually going to homeschool them because the distance learning didn’t work, or whatever was going on, it wasn’t a fit for whatever reason. So I encourage everyone, homeschooling isn’t for everyone, I’ll try to convince you of that. But to really ask yourself questions, and to see your child for who they are, and listen to them. Listen to them. Even if it means that your life gets a bit disrupted, some things are meant to be disrupted. Because what you build on the other side of that is better.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, thank you so much for kind of laying all that out. I think the thing that really stands out is really figuring out a new way to do it. And it calls attention to the fact that the education system wasn’t really working anyway. Right? And like we’ve been talking about on the podcast so far, that there’s so many different areas of our society, whether it’s health, education, that can be changed.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         And more likely than not by entrepreneurs. There’s one thing I want to talk to you about, too, which is about selling. So women struggle to sell things. Not all. But I have mentored so many women over the years who have a great product or a great service and can’t ask for the sale. Or get the sale and don’t send the invoice.

Jenny Fenig:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         What’s going on there? And how can we find and become empowered by that process of selling something? There’s nothing wrong with selling anything. It’s just an exchange of value if you’ve created a product that you’re proud of and it’s helping other people. What’s stopping you selling it?

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah. I know. It’s a wild thing to really watch that. And again, in my audience, I work with a lot of women service providers, and they provide an incredible service. But what I think a big piece, again, I’m looking at my audience in particular is that it comes so naturally to them. Like they would do it even if they didn’t get paid. So there’s almost sometimes guilt there around this is just who I am. I mean, it almost feels easy. You know what I mean? Like you’re just in it. And if you’re a coach, a consultant, whatever it is that you do, it just really is who you are. It comes through you. But it’s craft. It’s a skill set.

You’ve you’ve nurtured it over time, and you’ve studied and you’ve read and you’ve worked with teachers and programs and trainings and all the things, and so you need to be compensated for that. And when someone pays you for your thing, they actually take it more seriously. It becomes more valuable. You know how it is if you’re given something for free. How easy is it to blow it off or to not use it? Because you didn’t have to exchange anything for it. There was no “skin in the game for it”. So for service providers or anyone who has products, whatever it is, just know that you’re doing a service, you are doing a good thing for the person on the other side by letting them pay you, by letting them exchange that currency with you.

And if you aren’t willing to do that, and you just want to give everything away for free, it’s going to be very hard to continue staying in business. And so one mantra that I work with, and you all can play with it, is I serve, I deserve. I serve, I deserve. And I know that when I give my people an opportunity to invest, they’re not investing in me. They have purchased the thing that I’ve created and will guide them through or whatever they’re buying from me. But they’re investing in themselves, they’re investing in their business, they’re investing in this vision and this dream, and this opportunity to work on this thing. And for some of my clients is to work on the thing that has been a struggle or been a goal that they’ve had for so long.

So if I don’t give them that opportunity to invest in themselves, then they’re going to need to go someplace else. So this is our opportunity, women, to say, I have something and I deserve to be paid. And it feels so good when you can help support your family. Let’s say, again, you’re a single parent. Let’s say your partner, if your partner has gotten laid off. A lot of people have during COVID, a lot. Entire industries have gone away. Maybe a business, another business has dried up because people aren’t going to wherever anymore. I mean, this is the reality that we’re living in right now.

And so as women, we can really step into this. It doesn’t make you a bad parent, it doesn’t make you greedy, it doesn’t make you whatever, like fill in the blanks. And sometimes you’re going to get people who throw shade your way. They’re going to go, well, I can’t believe you’re charging that or I can’t believe that you’re selling that. I may have had that done to me too. And you know what? It doesn’t matter.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. Exactly. So Jenny, how can people find you and work with you? You’ve got all these different programs, and you teach people how to be intuitive coaches in this space as well. What’s the best way?

Jenny Fenig:                      Yeah, sure. Well, my home base is my name, jennyfenig.com. So you’re welcome. Just pop over there and cruise around. I’m on all the socials. I’m most active on Facebook and on Instagram. And then we do have a coach certification. I’m so excited, because I trained to become a coach all those years ago. And I discovered that there’s a lot of wonderful programs that teach people how to be great coaches, but the business piece is missing. And so it’s wonderful that you’re amazing at your craft. But if you don’t know how to actually then have a business with your craft, then you’re in trouble, and I want to help you with that.

And so we created Magic Makers Coach Certification and we teach the craft and business of intuitive coaching, specifically. And so really working with the energy of the cosmos, as I said, and we line up using what we call the Magic Makers Method, which is looking at all those touch points that the moon provides all of us every single day, and how to work with that to accomplish your goals in your personal life, in your business across the board. And I just love it. I love the people who step forward into that, I love what we do in there. And I really take pride in creating a powerful online experience. And I think for everyone listening, that’s an opportunity for you.

I do care, eventually, we’re going to come back to having in person stuff. But again, that’s kind of out of our hands right now. We got to do our part and follow the guidelines and really be a member of the global family. But we don’t need to say, well, I’m just going to have to sit around until I can do something, no. Get in the game. Get out there and create change and provide that transformative experience that your people want online. And so we’ve done that so powerfully in our coach certification and everyone can go check it out. It’s at magicmakerscoach.com.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Well, Jenny, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Jenny Fenig:                      I feel, yes, that I am flying high right now. So thank you for having me.