We recently connected with Jessica Ell and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

The principle I use to guide my life is this: “As you go the way of life, you will come to a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”

When my marriage ended in 2020, I left the real estate business I’d had with my former partner and got a job at a PR agency. I wasn’t sure what was next for me, but I’d learned two things about myself from my time in real estate:

I loved running a business.

I hated being at someone else’s beck-and-call.

I decided that the path forward for me was to start my own business, but that I’d need to nix the client part of it.

The “no-client” business solution was to sell a product, obviously.

The problem with that was that I had nothing to sell. I’m not a maker of things. I don’t cook, I don’t build, I don’t work with my hands. I work with thoughts and words and the things that happen between the ears.

And then it hit me: I would write books.

Somehow, I can’t remember now, I stumbled upon an online community where authors discussed their fiction businesses. Many were making full-time livings on their fiction. Some were making more than I was making at my PR job. Some were making hundreds of thousands of dollars. One broke a million in a year.

I was captivated.

This was something I could do.

I’d never written a piece of fiction in my life, but I figured if these people could do it, so could I.

I wrote my first novel in November 2020. In March 2021, I published the second novel I’d written.

And by the fall of 2021, I’d decided I was gonna go all-in. I was going to quit my job at the agency and become a full-time mystery novelist.

Was I selling any books at this point?

Almost none. The first book I published was intended to be a romantic comedy, but it contained almost no romance, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t funny, either.

Did I have a plan?

Loosely. The plan was to write a ton.

I had a conviction that the thing I needed most to be successful was the freedom to focus all my intent and energy on my business. So in order to execute my plan of becoming a novel-writing factory, I’d have to quit my job.

I was just about to quit. Days away from taking this enormous leap on what was, frankly, a dubious venture, considering that I hadn’t yet achieved any success with my fiction.

And then the stars aligned in a weird way, and I was offered a full-time job with the exact salary I wanted in a city I was dying to move to.

I took the job. I walked away from the ledge. I didn’t take the leap.

And as thrilled as I was by the job, I always felt a little disappointed in myself for not taking it. For not finding out what would’ve happened. I always felt like I’d taken the easy way out; like I’d given up on myself and my dream of working for myself.

During my time at the new job, I began hearing things like, “Jessica, you should be a life coach,” and, “Why aren’t you a coach?”

My own life had changed after discovering coaching and personal development in 2014, but I’d never considered coaching as a career.

I point that out because, if I hadn’t taken the job, I never would’ve seriously considered becoming a coach. But the Universe has a way of taking us exactly where we need to be, and then sometimes offering us another chance to make a different choice.

Two years after taking that job and walking away from the ledge, the Universe offered me another opportunity to jump into the unknown. The startup I worked for was going through rounds of layoffs, and I heard rumor that my entire department would be cut.

I was THRILLED. I couldn’t wait to revisit my plan of writing full-time and maybe becoming a life coach, too.

But then the layoffs didn’t come. And didn’t come. And didn’t come. And I realized that if I was serious about this, I was going to have to leap–I wasn’t going to be pushed.

After a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, struggling with fear and self-doubt, I did it.

I quit my job and invested a third of my savings in life coach training and a private business coach.

Right away, a few things happened – I signed exactly zero clients in the first few months, my dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and I moved back to my hometown to manage his treatment.

The dark period I went through as I fought to grow a business when everything seemed to be going wrong eventually brought me to a point of surrender when I “gave up” on trying to grow the business and turned to what I know: writing.

My first non-fiction book, “This is So Much Worse Than I Expected,” is about leaps of faith and the lessons learned in freefall and will be published in 2024.

My intention with the book is to encourage people to keep going and believe that, if they do, the magic will always appear.

How have all my risks turned out? Exactly as they should. The money is always there; the opportunities are always there; the inspiration is always there–even when it looks differently than I thought it would.

Ultimately, my risks have taught me that if you can relax and keep going with faith that the magic is going to be there, it always is.

It always is.

Jessica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I came here to live a big, magical, “I can’t believe that happened” life. That means adventuring, experimenting, failing, and carrying on. That’s my personal mission and reason for being.

From the outside, I’ve made a number of pivots in my career–things that seemingly make no sense.

But the internal reinvention has been the significant thing about my journey and has enabled me to continually step into the unknown with courage and trust.

I coach and write books for people who also want to live big, magical lives. The ones who look around at their perfectly fine lives and think, “Is this it?” “There has to be more than this… right?”

That’s where I was at one point–making a lot of money, living in a high-rise, getting regular Botox. And I was BORED. I realized that if I wasn’t living a life of adventure–a life of variety, with many chapters–I’d never be satisfied.

I’m no longer afraid of the unknown. In fact, I’m drawn to it almost obsessively. I trust it. When it comes to me and the unknown, I will bet on myself every time.

I know this is one of my gifts, so I offer life coaching to people who want to take their own leap of faith but keep stopping themselves.

Everyone gets Calls to Adventure at various points in their lives–and so, so many of them ignore it. For reasons like, “There’s no time,” “I can’t afford to,” “I have to pay the mortgage.”

It’s the greatest tragedy we perpetrate against ourselves. Life is too short to ignore the call.

I help people bet on themselves, go all-in, and undergo the absolutely transformational experience of leaping into the unknown.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I say this for business owners like me who want to go their own way–stop taking direction from other people. If you are following business or marketing systems that just aren’t working, and they’re frustrating you and causing you to start and stop and ruminate on why it isn’t working, you have to find your own way.

When I ran a real estate business, I was obsessed with following other people’s “proven” systems. I was convinced that if I just copied their methods exactly as taught, I would achieve the same level of success.

It never, never worked.

I have my own gifts and talents–things that are utterly natural for me–and when I trust and lean into those and just do what I want, things happen effortlessly. This is the magic I’m always talking about.

Other people don’t know your business and don’t know YOU the way you do. Be your own authority. Call your own shots.

Isn’t that why we all went into business for ourselves in the first place?

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

The attribute that changed the color of my life was willingness.

Before I published my first novel, I realized there was an absolutely essential element I’d have to get in place first. If I didn’t, I couldn’t pass Go. I couldn’t collect $200.

It was the willingness to get 1-star reviews of my books.

I realized I had to be WILLING to feel humiliated, embarrassed, ashamed. I had to be WILLING to have people say my work was garbage–and to say it PUBLICLY!

I now believe that willingness–the willingness to suffer, to lose money, to fail–is the key to success in area of life. When I look at the areas of my life that are stagnant, I can always see places where I am not willing to experience something, where I am resisting something.

No matter what your dream or desire is, there are things you’re going to have to be WILLING to experience if you want to move forward.

But once you embrace willingness as a core part of your life outlook–once you fling your arms wide and say, “Bring it, I was made for this,”–you become unstoppable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jessicaell.com; www.lydialanebooks.com
• Instagram: @thejessicaell; @lydialaneauthor
• Other: The Ill-Advised Podcast with Jessica Ell: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ill-advised-with-jessica-ell/id1707964517 My novels: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09JLC4HFK?nodl=1&dplnkId=f7e4a76d-71c7-4f8a-8059-d629ff0f9226

Image Credits
Anela Tayan