We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenny C. Bell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jenny C., appreciate you joining us today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.

I believe that failure is all a part of the larger journey to success. Cliche as this might sound, I think we all know it to be true. Being an author, professional fortune teller and host of my own Mighty Network group Our Coven, is my second career. I left a successful thirteen year long career as a teacher. In that time, I had even won a teacher of the year award. But because of lots of outside influences such as health and family stressors I walked away and decided that I would be an author and maybe a blogger or content creator. I really didn’t know anything about social media at the time, I only had a Facebook account. I also hadn’t written consistently since my college days.

But that didn’t stop me. The first things I tried was blogging, being a brand ambassador, and writing a book on mindful parenting. I quickly learned that blogging was kind of boring, tedious and hard for me to make money doing. I then learned that being a brand ambassador was really like being a Tupperware mom and I couldn’t make much doing that either. I did however complete the manuscript. I attended a book fair where I sat and listened to a panel of literary agents and paid $100 for one of them to tell me that if I didn’t have any kind of social media following no one would publish me. Which, by the way, I have learned isn’t true. While social media helps not all publishers care about this. She told me I needed at least 10k in followers. What she didn’t tell me and would have been helpful was that people actually don’t like parenting books. I learned this from a kind acquisitions editor at Chronicle Books.

Instead of letting this all frustrate me, I pivoted. Around this time my good friend and fellow author Shea West, shared with me that if I was more myself and more vulnerable on social media more would follow. The parenting manuscript was rejected about 100 times. I learned a lot from that first experience. My new pivot was still in parenting but now as a spiritual mother. I got roped into a startup company called Enlightenedhood. This project also failed, but I learned about social media from a much younger business partner. I also learned that it wasn’t really taboo anymore to say you are a witch. It was time for another pivot. I started sharing more witchcraft on instagram and that’s when my former student and very successful businessman Sergio Silesky told me I needed to be on Tik Tok. So I joined.

Witchtok was for me. I had finally found my audience. At the same time, I finished a manuscript on witchcraft which was rejected by many publishers, but gained me a wonderful literary agent. The manuscript was rejected by a very nice acquisitions editor at Llewellyn who said she could see I could write and asked me to pitch more ideas. I pitched Spirit Crystals: Discover Your Crystal Guide for Healing and Empowerment and she said to send a proposal. Now, I had an agent on my side who was invaluable in polishing that proposal and getting me the best contract for that book. I also decided to launch Our Coven a private paid social media for witches.

The lesson for me in this story of failures, was that I was failing when I was wearing a mask. I was failing when I wasn’t truly me. I was failing when I wasn’t being authentic. In careers where you are your brand, people can sense when you are not fully you and they don’t find that attractive.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Jenny C. Bell is the author Spirit Crystals: Discover Your Crystal Guide for Healing and Empowerment (July 2025), founder of the Our Coven online community, host of the Cozy Coven Chats podcast, and a practicing witch. For three decades, Jenny has practiced yoga, meditation, read tarot cards and worked with the healing powers of crystals. A Reiki master, meditation teacher, and lover of crystals, Jenny uses her years of wisdom to champion others on their witchy journey. Jenny lives in the PNW with her family and pets where she practices as a fortune teller, creator, and writer. Jenny is a contributor for Insight Timer. She is also an instructor on Udemy with five courses.

I feel my purpose is to help beginner witches find their way. I help people who feel drawn to the witchy path learn more whether this is through my courses, meditations, books, Tik Tok or Our Coven.

I am most proud of starting again in my career. I left a successful teaching career because I felt called to do something different. This took a lot of courage and risk but I did it and I couldn’t be happier. I am still a teacher. My career as a teacher taught me how to lead a lecture, how to edit a book, how to be patient, how to explain something in one minute and how to reach different types of people.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that I wasn’t a good writer. When I was a child, several of my elementary teachers saw me as gifted poet and writer. In high school, I went on to win a writing award and get published in some NYC zines. I took my first creative writing course at 19. At the end of this class, my professor reviewed my work and said, “It doesn’t matter really what I say because you will never be published.” I don’t know why I let her win, but I did. I stopped writing creatively all together. I changed my major to English literature instead of English with a focus on creative writing. I won a prestigious award for my essay writing at University and graduated with high honors, but I still didn’t write creatively. I had gone from writing nearly every day to not at all. I didn’t begin writing creatively again until the age of 28 after the traumatic and premature birth of my daughter coincided with the death of my grandmother. I was in therapy and my therapist suggested writing again. I had to do so much unmasking, undoing, unlearning and let go of so much negative self-talk to get to where I could write again. Then I had to stay resilient when I watched my first manuscript get rejected 100 times. I had to hold onto hope that the former professor was wrong.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I built my Tik Tok following with pure love. I approached witchtok like I would my classroom. I figured everyone deserved to learn and all were welcome. I came to each video with a smile, kindness in my voice and a hope to help others learn. I think the key to Tik Tok is to be yourself. People on this social media want to learn, they want realness and they want you to be you. My first video to go viral was a video in which I wasn’t wearing any makeup, I misspoke and was just chatting about the movie The Craft. The key was that I was real and chatting as if the viewer were a friend. I took this success and ran with it. I like to think of myself as the Mr. Rogers of witchcraft. Truly all are welcome to my channel as long as they act neighborly. The key is to make videos you would watch instead of what’s trending.

I also learned to be unafraid of rejection. When I had under 10k followers I noticed the publisher Hay House was following me. I asked if I could get free books to make videos with. They put me in contact with an amazing publicist and the rest is history. I now work with several publishers and jewelry makers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jennycbell.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ourcovencommunity/#
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@healingwithJenny
• Other: Tik Tok: http://www.tiktok.com/@jenny_c_bell

Image Credits

The first headshot is by Olivia Leigh Photography the rest are mine except the book cover but I have permission to share it. The book is by Llewellyn Worldwide.